Adult Stature and Protein Intake During Childhood and Adolescence From 3 Years Onward

Abstract

Context: Varying protein intake is known to influence human height growth. However, whether a habitually higher protein intake consistently above dietary recommendations during childhood and adolescence affects adult stature is not known.

Objective: To examine whether protein intake in excess of recommendations from childhood onward may exert an anabolic effect on adult stature.

Methods: We examined habitual protein intake based on 3-day weighed dietary records and 24-hour urinary biomarker excretions in a longitudinal cohort of 189 healthy individuals aged between 3 and 17 years (analyzing 11 diet recordings and 11 24-urine samples per child on average). Urinary urea nitrogen (uN) excretion was used as a biomarker for protein intake. Multilinear regressions were applied to examine the prospective associations of average total and average animal protein intake during growth with the outcome adult height (AH) after adjusting for parental heights, energy intake, dietary potential renal acid load (PRAL), and pubertal, early-life, and socioeconomic factors.

Results: Mean SD scores of total (P = .001) and animal (P < .0001) protein intake as well as uN (P = .01) were prospectively and independently related to adult height in girls, but not in boys. Also for girls only, the fully adjusted regression for renal biomarkers (R2total = 0.79) indicated an inverse relationship between AH and the urinary biomarker for dietary acidity PRAL (P = .06).

Conclusion: Our prospective, biomarker-confirmed findings on habitual protein intake during the pediatric period provide evidence that protein ingestion above dietary recommendation contributes to an enhanced AH in girls. This enhancement, in turn, may be weakened by an insufficient alkalizing potential through PRAL-raising fruit- and vegetable-poor nutrition.

Keywords: 24-h urinary urea nitrogen; adult stature; childhood and adolescence; dietary protein intake; growth; potential renal acid load.