Building baby: diet during pregnancy (part two) | A film by the Wellcome Trust

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.