A recent Finnish study showed that individualised and family-based lifestyle counselling helps 6-8-year-old children increase their physical activity levels and improve their diet quality during a two-year follow-up. The results of the study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland were recently published in Preventive Medicine.
"Children from families who participated in lifestyle counselling were physically more active, ate more vegetables and vegetable-oil-based spreads and had a higher intake of important nutrients than children in the control group. However, the impact of the intervention on screen time remained modest," says Anna Viitasalo, MD, PhD, from the University of Eastern Finland.