So far, the kind of stuff that I have
found out is, as long as you're
making sure to get the basic nutrients
that you need, your baby is going to be
fine. But this, maybe could tell us a
little bit more about whether if I eat bad
things, what it might,
what effect it might have on my baby.
Talking to Hazel, just briefly over the
phone was interesting. Her cohort study
Started getting women before they even
became pregnant, so it meant that
they had an idea of what they were eating
long before they became pregnant.
"It's not easy for a woman to eat a
healthy diet, if everyone's eating
unhealthy diets around her, so this
isn't just a message for woman
it is a message for men as well.
The two things I've focused in on at the
moment - one is the importance of the
womans diet before during the pregnancy
on her children, because the pathway
that she sets up for eating for herself
are what she then uses in the quality
of diet she feeds her children. The other
side of it is finding what we've shown
about low vitamin D levels, being linked
to later bone health in children."
Today I'm here at the Royal Veterinary
College, and it's cause I've found this
really interesting research about
junk food and rats, and the sort of affect
on the offspring of rats
when their mothers eat junk food during
their pregnancy, so I'm really
excited to find out a little bit
more about this.
Junk food is defined by: food that is very
dense in energy, and contains a lot
of fat, sugar, and or salt. So we fed
pregnant rats either the controlled diet,
which is this standard laboratory rodent
feed, and the experimental groups were fed
the junk food diets, so they had free
access all to of this junk food, and they
also had access to the standard healthy
chow.
This roughly represents how much
fat you would get from a control group.
So offspring fed a controlled diet,
a healthy diet, from gestation, up to
the end of adolescence.
The second group, is when the mother's
are fed a healthy diet in pregnancy and
lactation. And then at weening
the offspring are given free access to
junk food, up to the end of adolescence.
So they eat what they want.
And the last group is the fat taken
from offspring fed the junk food diet
from fetal life up to the end of
adolescence. So you can see they've got
almost twice as much abdominal fat
than those born to a mother fed a
healthy, balanced diet.
By being exposed to junk food diet before
birth, through the metal dieting, pregnancy
and lactation, those offspring developed
obesity earlier in life, they overwrite
and they developed a greater taste for
junk food than those born to mothers
fed a healthy diet.
By seeing all of the fat that had been
laid on, into these babies stomachs
and abdominal regions, and livers
from their mothers being fed junk food
during pregnancy, and during the breast
feeding stage. I started to realize
A little bit more about my own
you know, responsibility in making
sure that not only do I make sure that I
get all nutrients that I need, but that I also
don't overdue it and dont take in
to much energy, and dont take in too
much saturated fat. I went and had a salad
for lunch after that.
I sent off for my grant, and a week later
I got it paid into my account.
I didn't end up spending it on food
at all actually.
I'm going to make sure I spend it on
something healthy, and something that
goes towards the well being of my baby
Because that's something I've definitely
taken away from talking to these
scientists. There's something you can do
at every stage of the pregnancy.
If you are gonna beat yourself up over
eating a biscuit with some full fat cheese
its just not going to be worth it, but
It's just important not to eat that the
whole way through.