By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The more time a Mexican-American child's family has lived in the US, the less likely he or she is to have a healthy diet, US researchers report.

With every successive generation after immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries to the US, Jamillah Hoy Rosas and her colleagues at New York University found, young members of the family were increasingly likely to adopt a less healthy diet that included more fat and less fruit.

Based on these findings, Rosas told Reuters Health that healthcare workers who treat children with Latin American roots may want to encourage them to maintain their healthy eating habits--such as consuming fruits, beans and vegetables--even when surrounded by a new culture characterized by high-fat cuisine.

"You want to look at their traditional diet, and you want to value that," Rosas advised.

Rosas and her colleagues discovered the link between acculturation and diet quality by assessing the eating habits of 449 children who were originally born in Latin American countries (first-generation immigrants) and 1,568 children who were born in the US but whose parents hailed from Latin America (second-generation immigrants). The authors also surveyed the diets of 1,165 Mexican-American, US-born children whose parents were also born in this country, known as third-generation immigrants.

Rosas and her colleagues Drs. L. Beth Dixon and Kristie J. Lancaster presented their findings at the 85th Annual Meeting of the American Dietetic Association (ADA) in Philadelphia. The ADA is a professional organization that represents the nation's licensed nutritionists and dietitians.

The investigators found that first-generation children aged 2 to 5 and 12 to 16 had healthier diets than their third-generation peers. In fact, they found that the children who ate the most nutritious foods were first-generation immigrants between 2 and 5 years old, while those with the least healthy diets tended to be third-generation teenagers.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Rosas explained that she and her team did not notice any significant differences in healthy eating habits by generation among 6- to 11-year-olds. This may be because kids in this age group tend to rely on school food, which would be the same for all students, she suggested.

"These are school-aged children," she said. "They're less dependent on their parents for food, and are eating most of their calories at school."

In contrast, younger children eat at home more often than at school, and what is served at home may change as families spend more time in the US, Rosas noted. And as teenagers start to rely more heavily on foods outside both home and school, those with families who have been in the US for long periods may be more likely than newer immigrants to opt for standard, often high-fat US fare.