Casting for the Cure

We’ve had it drummed into us that smoking and drinking when pregnant can harm the baby, but new research published in The Journal of Physiology suggests that poor diet can also cause long-lasting, irreversible damage in offspring; from heart disease to diabetes.

To establish the dangers of a junk food diet, researchers Stéphanie Bayol and Neil Stickland at the Royal Veterinary College, London, fed female rats a diet of crisps, cheese, muffins and other processed foods throughout pregnancy and lactation.

The offspring, who were overweight at birth, were born with a taste for junk-food themselves. But even when fed a healthy diet, the junk-food babies had a host of medical problems that lasted beyond adolescence.

Bayol noted that the rats had raised cholesterol and triglyceride levels - both associated with heart disease and that insulin and glucose levels were also unusually high, known to be a cause of type-2 diabetes.

The female offspring were particularly badly affected, expressing high levels of glucose and the appetite-promoting hormone leptin, making them very prone to obesity.

“It seems that a mother’s diet whilst pregnant and breastfeeding is very important for the long term health of her child,” said Bayol. “This does not mean that obesity and poor health is inevitable and it is important that we take care of ourselves and live a healthy lifestyle. But it does mean that mothers must eat responsibly whilst pregnant.”

Source: The Journal of Physiology