Pregnancy is perhaps the most important time to make wise
dietary choices. Not only does fetal
growth depend on the quality of mom's diet, but the food choices a mom makes
have effects that extend into her child's adult years. The first effects of mom's diet are on the
baby's insulin and glucose levels immediately at birth.
A new study has demonstrated the importance of a healthy
maternal diet as a way of avoiding increased insulin and glucose levels in the
child, which are indicators of diabetes and metabolic syndrome risk. The study was headed by the Complutense
University of Madrid and published in the European Journal of Clinical
Nutrition, which studies diet during this vital stage and sees cell growth in
terms of both number and size.
Previous studies have already outlined that when the mother
does not consume enough food during pregnancy, the glucose supply to other
tissues is reduced in the fetus to ensure that the brain receives the correct
amount. In turn, this causes reduced fetal growth. This adaptive mechanism is
known as Barker’s thrifty phenotype hypothesis.
“However, the effects of an imbalance between fats, proteins
and carbohydrates are not as well-known. In others words, the effect during
pregnancy of Western diets that vary greatly from the Mediterranean variety are
not well-known,” as explained by Francisco J. Sánchez-Muniz, researcher at the
Complutense University of Madrid and one of the authors of the study.
The new study reveals that when pregnant women ingest
adequate energy quantities, their children are born at a normal weight of
around 7.2 pounds to 7.7 pounds.
The experts state that when a woman does not eat properly
during pregnancy, the child is born with a diabetogenic profile, meaning high
levels of serum glucose and insulin and a marker of insulin resistance. This confirms the influence of the diet on
fetal pancreas development as well as glucose and insulin concentration at
birth.
But what hat is “proper” eating? The researchers concluded that a balanced
Mediterranean diet is the best choice for pregnant mamas. But we argue that the Mediterranean diet must
still be individualized and thus perfected for each woman.
