Nutrient intake: relationships with lipids and lipoproteins in 6--19-year-old children--the Princeton School District study.

Relationships between nutrient intakes and plasma lipids and lipoproteins were studied in 949 randomly selected children, ages 6--19, in the biracial, suburban, Princeton School District. While nutrient intake increased with age in males, such age-associated increases in nutrient ingestion were much less consistent or were not significant for females. Primarily in the 6--9 and 10--12 yr age groups, white children ingested more total calories, more saturated fat, and a lower ratio of polyunsaturated to saturated (P/S) fat, more total carbohydrates, sucrose, starch, and other carbohydrates, and more protein than black children. After adjusting for age, race, sex, weight, and height, several nutrient-lipid and lipoprotein partial correlation coefficients were significant, but of relatively low magnitude. There were weak but significant inverse correlations between dietary P/S ratios and dietary carbohydrates with both total (r = -.07, -0.7) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (C-LDL), (r = -.07, -.08). Plasma high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (C-HDL) was inversely and significantly correlated with dietary sucrose (r = -.07); plasma triglyceride correlated positively with dietary sucrose (r = .08). Potential relationships between nutrients and lipids-lipoproteins were also examined in children at the extremes of, and in the middle of, lipid-lipoprotein distributions. After covariance adjustment for age, sex, race, and Quetelet index, children having the highest levels of C-HDL had the lowest intake of dietary carbohydrate and total calories. After further covariance adjustment for total calories, children at the highest end of the plasma cholesterol distribution had a greater intake of cholesterol and total protein than did children in the lowest end of the distribution. Nutrient intake may play a small but significant role relative to lipids and lipoproteins in children, and as such, may have importance relative to pediatric precursors of atherosclerosis.