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NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A mother's high-fat diet may alter her baby's brain and make the child prone to obesity for the rest of his or her life, according to a new study.
Researchers said the children of mothers who consume a high-fat diet during pregnancy developed unusual circuits in the part of the brain that regulates metabolism. The study was conducted on mice by the Yale School of Medicine and published Jan. 23.
“Our study suggests that expecting mothers can have major impact on the long-term metabolic health of their children by properly controlling nutrition during this critical developmental period of the offspring,” said co-lead author Tamas Hovarth in a statement.
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Pregnant woman's diet can predispose children to obesity
Do junk food-loving moms have junk food-loving babies? A new study involving rats suggests they do.The researchers fed mother mice a high-fat diet and then observed their offspring. They said the baby mice continued to be overweight and have abnormalities in their glucose metabolism for the rest of their lives.
The most surprising finding was that even mice born to parents who weren't obese still had altered neural connections if their mother ate a high-fat diet, Hovarth told NPR. He said baby mice born to mothers who ate a high-fat diet had different metabolic profiles than mice born to mothers who were fed a normal diet.
Even though the study was conducted using mice, researchers said the findings suggest the same relationship between high-fat diets and a baby's development would exist in humans. Hovarth said even mothers who aren't overweight should consider being careful about what they eat.
Mothers can control or even reverse their offspring's predisposition to obesity and resulting diseases by altering their food intake.
–Tamas Hovarth
A human mother's diet is most likely to impact a child's lifelong health during the third trimester when the child's neural circuits are being formed, Hovarth said.
“Mothers can control or even reverse their offspring’s predisposition to obesity and resulting diseases by altering their food intake,” he said. “Because gestational diabetes frequently manifests during the third trimester, the results could inform more intense screening of mothers for alterations in glucose metabolism.”
The findings were published in the journal "Cell."
