Dr Pauline Emmett

Dr Pauline Emmett is an independent Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health in Bristol. Previously she was head of Nutrition Research for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) based in Bristol. She has worked as a research nutritionist for 30 years at Bristol University. Initially a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics at London University she worked as a hospital Dietitian, then moved into research in 1977. Since 1993 she has been working in the area of nutrition and diet in pregnancy and childhood. Her PhD from Bristol University involved research into childhood diet in the ALSPAC cohort. She is very experienced in the use of dietary assessment methods in children and adults. She has published widely - 110 publications at beginning of 2008.

Pauline is particularly interested is in the way in which early eating habits (breastfeeding, introduction of solids, type of snack foods) may influence later dietary patterns and how these might relate to the development of obesity and other disease outcomes in later life. She undertakes invited lectures on themes such as infant feeding, childhood diet, childhood obesity and the role of dietary long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in child development. Some of the key findings of her research are:

• Diet in pregnancy, in particular fish eating, shown to affect visual development in preschool children
• Weaning diet shown to affect both the child's relationship with food later in childhood and biological outcomes such as iron status. In formula fed infants increasing energy intake at 4 months associated with obesity at age 5 years
• Dietary differences, particularly in types of foods eaten, shown to go hand in hand with social inequalities both in pregnancy and infancy
• Changes in dietary patterns in childhood highlighted for the first time as the dietary assessments collected prospectively have been used in longitudinal analysis
• Increasing levels of obesity in children found and risk factors for obesity development investigated, these include fast early growth
• In utero growth associations with cardiovascular disease outcomes investigated jointly with other European countries
• Diet has been related to growth and blood levels of the hormone insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-I); protein intake particularly from milk was associated with high levels of IGF-I and increased height
• Dietary diary data collected at 7 years used to assess the energy density of the diet: a difference in food energy density between children identified as obese using BMI and non-obese children shown; such that the obese children have on average a more energy dense diet.

Main Interests