Junk Food Addiction during Pregnancy May Harm the Unborn Kid

A new study has claimed that junk food addiction during pregnancy could indulge the children in the same type of food habits. Researchers believe that high fat and high sugar diet leads to changes in the brain's pathway of the unborn kids which changes their food preferences.

The research has thrown light on the fact that why some people are addicted to junk-food while others resist it.

Researchers from the FOODplus Research Centre in the School of Agriculture Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide, Australia, conducted a study on a group of pregnant rats.

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Expectant Mother's Poor Diet May Cause Baby Health Problems

BEIJING，March 11 (Xinhuanet) --A poor diet during pregnancy may result in health problems such as diabetes for the offspring in later life, according media reports Friday quotting a new research.

Based on a study of rats, researchers from the University of Cambridge altered the protein content of the mother's diet during pregnancy as they found that rats were more vulnerable to the effects of diseases if their mothers were malnourished while they were pregnant.

Further, the study also showed that an imbalanced diet in the expectant mother can compromise the long-term functioning of a gene in the child. And the gene, named Hnf4a, is believed to play a major role in the development of the pancreas and in the production of insulin.

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POOR DIET DURING PREGNANCY INCREASES BABY'S SUSCEPTIBILITY TO DIABETES

Scientists of the Cambridge University have been successful in establishing a link between a woman's diet during the 9-months of her pregnancy and the child's risk of developing diabetes later in life. Researchers have identified a gene Hnf4a which is affected by the pregnant woman's diet and causes type 2 diabetes. These genetic changes can be inherited and passed on to future generations.

Senior author on the paper and British Heart Foundation senior fellow from Cambridge's Institute of Metabolic Science, Dr. Susan Ozanne said, "What is most exciting about these findings is that we are now starting to really understand how nutrition during the first nine months of life spent in the womb shapes our long-term health by influencing how the cells in our body age.

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Poor Diet in Pregnancy Tied to Disease in Offspring: Rat Study Prenatal malnourishment may affect gene that influences long-term health, researchers suggest

You may have a higher long-term risk of disease if your mother ate poorly during pregnancy, a new study in rats suggests.

U.K. researchers found that rats were more vulnerable to the effects of aging if their mothers were malnourished while they were pregnant. The study was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, a rodent mother's diet appeared to affect her offspring's expression later in life of a gene called Hnf4a, which plays a major role in the development of the pancreas and later in the production of insulin. Mothers with poor diets had offspring who expressed less of the Hnf4a gene, something that appeared to increase their risk of type 2 diabetes, a significant contributing factor to both heart disease and cancer.

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