Can early adulthood experiences influence healthy eating in midlife?

Your education and work in early adulthood play a key role in how healthily you eat later on in life, according to new BCS70 research.

What we asked you

When we caught up with you for the Age 46 Survey, we asked you to complete an online questionnaire about your diet, recording the food and drink you consumed on two days — one weekday and one weekend day.

A team of researchers, from universities across the UK, examined the information you shared in these diaries to see how your diet compared to the Mediterranean diet.

The Mediterranean diet is linked to a reduced risk of dementia and cardiovascular diseases. It focuses on unprocessed whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats like olive oil, and moderate amounts of fish and dairy.

The researchers analysed your diet diary entries alongside other information you, and your parents, have provided over the years about your lives.

What the research found

The researchers found that your education and your work in early adulthood were linked to your diet quality in midlife. For example, those of you who stayed on in education past age 18 and worked in professional, managerial or skilled non-manual roles at age 24 tended to have the best diet at age 46.

Factors such as your household income when you were a child, your parents’ social status, and where you lived as an adult didn’t affect your diet quality to the same degree.

Why this research matters

Eating a healthy diet is important for our overall health and is something we have some control over. Understanding that our food choices in midlife can be influenced by our circumstances as young adults should be helpful for tackling health inequalities.

What’s on your plate?

The Age 46 Survey was not the first time we asked you to complete a diet diary. You might remember completing one of these for us when you were 16.

Fast forward to now, and around 5,000 of you filled in a diet diary as part of our latest survey — Life in Your Early 50s. We’re looking forward to seeing what we can learn from this new information and sharing our findings with you!

Read the full research report

Early adulthood socioeconomic trajectories contribute to inequalities in adult diet quality, independent of childhood and adulthood socioeconomic position by Yinhua Tao, Jane Maddock, Laura Howe and Eleanor M Winpenny published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health in September 2024.