Nutrition during pregnancy: your kids are what you eat!

It is one of the most important, but one of the most overlooked aspects of pregnancy – but a new study by the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton has shown again how important it is to ensure that expectant mothers maintain good nutrition during pregnancy.

The study followed a group of 86 kiddies born in 1967-8. At this time the mothers were told to eat a pound of red meat a day to avoid pregnancy complications. These kiddies are now 30 year old men and women and the study has followed them and has now found that the more red meat the mother ate, the higher the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, was present in the child.

Dr Rebecca Reynolds, the head of the study concluded that:

“This study adds to the increasing evidence of the importance of the maternal diet and suggests that one of the ways in which it can have these long term effects is by permanently altering stress hormone levels.

“We don’t know why this occurs – it may be that the baby is put under stress during pregnancy which causes irreversibly high levels of cortisol.”

The article (here) goes on to warn about the dangers of messing too much with your nutrition during pregnancy, but only from the angle of – do not go on Atkins or any other restrictive diet during pregnancy.

Personally, I am never going to be a pregnant mother-to-be, but if me and my partner ever chose to have a baby, one thing is certain – I will be making sure that she up’s her intake of omega 3 during pregnancy. Another study reported by the beautiful BBC earlier this year has shown that if the expectant mother consumes less than the required amounts of omega 3 fatty acids during pregnancy then their children had lower IQs, poorer motor skills and hand to eye coordination!

And this was no small study:

Looking at the effects of Omega-3 intake on 9,000 mothers and their children, the team found mothers with the lowest intake of the essential fatty acid had children with a verbal IQ six points lower than the average.

The necessity does not end with the woman’s nutrition during pregnancy either – the newborn must also continue to consume omega 3 fatty acids after birth. According to expert nutritionalist Patrick Holford, Director of the Brain Bio Centre states:

“It’s absolutely essential that pregnant women take in enough Omega-3 and that children in early infancy take in enough Omega-3.”

So, while Dr. McKeith is right in saying ‘You Are What You Eat’ it is also fair to say that during pregnancy your kids are what you eat!

Click here for more information on the foods containing omega 3 fatty acids