Study objective: To examine associations between food and nutrient intake, measured in childhood, and adult cancer in a cohort with over 60 years follow up. Design and setting: The study is based on the Boyd Orr cohort. Intake of fruit and vegetables, energy, vitamins C and E, carotene, and retinol was assessed from seven day household food inventories carried out during a study of family diet and health in 16 rural and urban areas of England and Scotland in 1937-39. Participants: 4999 men and women, from largely working class backgrounds, who had been children in the households participating in the pre-war survey. Analyses are based on 3878 traced subjects with full data on diet and social circumstances. Main results: Over the follow up period there were 483 incident malignant neoplasms. Increased childhood fruit intake was associated with reduced risk of incident cancer. In fully adjusted logistic regression models, odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) with increasing quartiles of fruit consumption were 1.0 (reference), 0.66 (0.48 to 0.90), 0.70 (0.51 to 0.97), 0.62 (0.43 to 0.90); p value for linear trend=0.02. The association was weaker for cancer mortality. There was no clear pattern of association between the other dietary factors and total cancer risk. Conclusions: Childhood fruit consumption may have a long term protective effect on cancer risk in adults. Further prospective studies, with individual measures of diet are required to further elucidate these relations.

Objective: To examine the association between childhood diet and cardiovascular mortality. Design: Historical cohort study. Setting: 16 centres in England and Scotland. Participants: 4028 people (from 1234 families) who took part in Boyd Orr's survey of family diet and health in Britain between 1937 and 1939 followed up through the National Health Service central register.Exposures studied: Childhood intake of fruit, vegetables, fish, oily fish, total fat, saturated fat, carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E estimated from household dietary intake. Main outcome measures: Deaths from all causes and deaths attributed to coronary heart disease and stroke. Results: Higher childhood intake of vegetables was associated with lower risk of stroke. After controlling for age, sex, energy intake, and a range of socioeconomic and other confounders the rate ratio between the highest and lowest quartiles of intake was 0.40 (95% confidence interval 0.19 to 0.83, p for trend 0.01). Higher intake of fish was associated with higher risk of stroke. The fully adjusted rate ratio between the highest and lowest quartile of fish intake was 2.01 (95% confidence interval 1.09 to 3.69, p for trend 0.01). Intake of any of the foods and constituents considered was not associated with coronary mortality. Conclusions: Aspects of childhood diet, but not antioxidant intake, may affect adult cardiovascular risk.

Objective: To examine the relation between energy intake in childhood and adult mortality from cancer. Study design: Cohort study. Setting: 16 rural and urban centres in England and Scotland. Subjects: 3834 people who took part in Lord Boyd Orr's Carnegie survey of family diet and health in prewar Britain between 1937 and 1939 who were followed up with the NHS central register. Standardised methods were used to measure household dietary intake during a one week period. Main outcome measures: Cancer mortality. Results: Significant associations between childhood energy intake and cancer mortality were seen when the confounding effects of social variables were taken into account in proportional hazards models (relative hazard for all cancer mortality 1.15 (95% confidence interval 1.06 to 1.24), P = 0.001, for every MJ increase in adult equivalent daily intake in fully adjusted models). This effect was essentially limited to cancers not related to smoking (relative hazard 1.20; 1.07 to 1.34; P = 0.001), with similar effects seen in men and women. Conclusion: This positive association between childhood energy intake and later cancer is consistent with animal evidence linking energy restriction with reduced incidence of cancer and the association between height and human cancer, implying that higher levels of energy intake in childhood increase the risk of later development of cancer. This evidence for long term effects of early diet confirm the importance of optimal nutrition in childhood and suggest that the unfavourable trends seen in the incidence of some cancers may have their origins in early life.

Study objectives-To examine associations between five measures of housing conditions during childhood and subsequent mortality from all causes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Design-Historical cohort study. Main results-Poorer housing conditions were generally associated with increased adult mortality. After adjustment for childhood and adult socioeconomic factors, statistically significant associations were only found between lack of private indoor tapped water supply and increased mortality from coronary heart disease (hazard ratio 1.73, (95% CI 1.13, 2.64); and between poor ventilation and overall mortality (hazard ratio for people from households with poorest ventilation relative to best ventilation 1.30, 95% CI 0.97, 1.74). Conclusions-This study provides evidence that associations between housing conditions in childhood and mortality from common diseases in adulthood are not strong, but are in some respects distinguishable from those of social deprivation.

Self-reported measures of height and weight may be used in studies of the elderly although systematic reporting errors may bias effect estimates. As overweight individuals tend to under-report and the short and underweight tend to over-report, studies investigating associations of disease with height and weight using self-reported measures will underestimate effects. The weak associations between childhood and adult BMI indicate that associations between childhood adiposity and adult cardiovascular disease found in this cohort may reflect the specific effect of childhood overweight, rather than its persistence into adulthood. This suggests that avoidance of adiposity may be as important in childhood as in adulthood.