742 of the children on their health and growth were studied. Around 500 children aged 2–14 received supplements and a similar number of non-supplemented children acted as controls.1,3 The initial aim of establishing the Boyd Orr cohort was to investigate the long-term impact of environmental factors in early life on adult coronary heart disease mortality. Whilst the possible impact of poor childhood nutrition on adult health had been the subject of research and policy interest for many years,4–7 specific interest in the influence of early life exposures on adult cardiovascular disease was re-awakened by a series of studies that began in the 1980s by Professor David Barker and colleagues at the University of Southampton.8,9 These studies demonstrated inverse associations of markers of foetal growth with cardiovascular risk factors and mortality. An important strength of the material collected in the Carnegie Survey/Boyd Orr cohort was the availability of detailed measures of childhood diet; most of the research in this field uses proxy measures of pre-natal and childhood nutrition (e.g. birth weight, height).10 Studies on the cohort to date have investigated a range of disease endpoints, particularly coronary heart disease and cancer in relation to infant and childhood diet, the socio-economic conditions experienced by the children, and markers of childhood nutritional status (body mass index, leg length, and height).