Maternal eating habits may affect children’s weight later in life
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Maternal nutrition during pregnancy may have a long-term impact on children’s weight trajectories, researchers reported.
Previous studies have largely examined the relationship between a woman’s diet during pregnancy and its impact on offspring BMI trajectories during the neonatal and early-childhood periods, according to Carmen Monthé-Drèze, MD, attending neonatologist in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Brigham Women’s Hospital and an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
Monthé-Drèze and colleagues examined the associations of maternal nutrition based on three diet indices — the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII), the Mediterranean Diet Score and the Alternate Healthy Eating Index-for Pregnancy (AHEI-P) — and offspring growth trajectories during specific periods from birth through adolescence. Their analysis included 1,459 mother-child pairs.
The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggested that children of women with the highest DII scores, which indicated a pro-inflammatory diet, had higher BMI-z growth rates at ages 3 to 10 years and higher BMI z-scores from ages 7 to 10 years. Additionally, children of women who had low adherence to a Mediterranean diet had higher BMI z-scores from ages 3 to 15 years. The researchers did not find an association between AHEI-P and BMI z-scores from birth through adolescence.
Monthé-Drèze said the findings add to the importance of encouraging healthy eating during pregnancy.
“In particular, women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should consider a Mediterranean diet, which may not only benefit their own health, but may also help their child maintain a healthy weight,” she said in the press release.
Perspective
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David S. Seres, MD, ScM, PNS, FASPEN
In their study, Monthé-Drèze and colleagues demonstrated an interesting relationship between certain scores applied to maternal diet and the growth rate of their children. They concluded that two of the types of scores were significantly correlated to fetal growth, whereas a third was not. Unfortunately, because the study was not randomized, it can only be considered suggestive, and should not by itself serve to guide maternal eating.
In observational studies such as these, there is always the possibility that something not considered is the cause of the effect seen. For example, it may be that the same genetic predisposition that guides growth rates also drives maternal dietary preferences. While there is no evidence for this, and it is just a made-up example, one must be open to such possibilities. Science tells us that when these types of relationships are tested in randomized trials, they are far too often found to lack causality, or even, less commonly, to generate harm.
Maternal diet has always been an area of interest, but with recent discoveries we now know that it is quite feasible that events in the womb may dictate many of our biological processes. The most important of these discoveries is that genes may be turned on or off for generations in response to environmental stresses, including during fetal development. This process is called epigenetics, and it is in very early stages of research. Nevertheless, this additional science lends credibility to the authors conclusion that “identifying the specific dietary patterns in pregnancy associated with rapid weight gain in children could inform strategies to reduce child obesity.” More work is necessary, and certainly desirable.
Past Chair of the Medical Nutrition Council, American Society for Nutrition
Professor of medicine, Institute of Human Nutrition
Director of medical nutrition and associate clinical ethicist, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
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