13: The Association Between Meat and Meat Alternatives Consumption and Iron Stores in Early Childhood
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Iron deficiency is a common childhood problem that can have lasting negative cognitive and psychomotor developmental effects. To prevent iron deficiency, the new 2014 Canadian nutrition recommendations for healthy term infants from six to 24 months recommend iron-rich complementary foods such as meat and meat alternatives two or more times a day. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the association between meat and meat alternatives consumption and iron status in young children and to assess the association between red meat consumption and iron status among children meeting current Canadian recommendations for meat consumption. Healthy children, ages 12–36 months, were recruited from a primary care practice-based research network. A cross-sectional study was conducted. Children's meat and meat alternatives consumption was measured by a validated questionnaire, NutriSTEP®. Multivariable regression analyses were used to evaluate an association between meat consumption and serum ferritin, and iron deficiency (serum ferritin <14 μg/L) adjusting for potential confounding variables. A total of 875 children (median age 19 months) were included. 72% of children met the recommended intake of meat and meat alternatives two or more times per day and 66% of children ate red meat in the past three days. Adjusted regression analyses revealed that eating meat or meat alternatives was not associated with serum ferritin (0.38 μg/L [95% CI −0.98 to 1.82], P=0.59) or with iron deficiency (odds ratio [OR]=0.87 [95% CI 0.69 to 1.09], P=0.23). Among children who ate meat or meat alternatives according to recommendations, red meat consumption was not associated with serum ferritin (0.33 μg/L [95% CI −2.51 to 3.54], P =0.83) or with iron deficiency (OR=1.19 [95% CI 0.70 to 2.03], P=0.50). Meat consumption according to current Canadian recommendations may not be associated with iron status in young Canadian children. This study and other evidence suggests that other modifiable determinants (e.g., daily cow's milk intake and breastfeeding duration) may be more promising targets for the prevention of iron deficiency in early childhood.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".