Moms who eat high-fat diet before, during pregnancy 'program' babies to be fat, at risk
Date: 19.9.2011
New research in mice indicates that babies born to moms who eat a high-fat diet before and during pregnancy have a higher fat mass and smaller livers than babies whose moms consume low-fat fare.
The good news, the researchers report, is that moms who switch to a low-fat diet during pregnancy considerably reduce the risk of these negative effects. Their findings are published online in the American Journal of Physiology and Endocrinology Metabolism, a publication of the American Physiological Society.
One of the key findings here is that the offspring are born with a marked shift in body composition, away from lean mass and toward fat mass, prior to any dietary exposure in the offspring themselves. These findings demonstrate that changing to a low-fat diet during pregnancy minimizes the harmful effects of maternal obesity on the newborn's body composition, potentially reducing the child's risk of developing obesity and related diseases later in life.
