The role of fats in the lifecycle stages: the primary school years.

The most significant influence on a child's eating patterns is family eating behaviour, specifically in encouraging fruit and vegetable intake. The recommended 30% total energy from fat can be achieved by practical changes in eating pattern, such as limiting high fat snack foods to occasional or treat items. Saturated fat intake can be reduced to recommended levels by reducing intake from whole milk and yoghurt, ice-cream, and potato and snack items, and replacing part of this with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acid sources such as nuts, seeds, margarine or hummus dips.