Your diet while pregnant can shape your baby’s health

Your diet while pregnant can shape your baby’s health

As a healthy, pregnant woman, your doctor is likely to tell you that you may eat anything that appeals to you, provided they are healthy for you and your baby.

It is also a fact that many expectant mothers crave certain types of foods, while others simply chow down on a single food for the better part of their pregnancy duration. Medically, this is referred to as ‘pica,’ and doctors further describe it as “eating non-nutritional substances.”

In fact, obstetrician/gynaecologist, Dr. Mayokun David, says pregnancy and food cravings go hand in hand. The only problem, she says, is that sometimes, these cravings represent a nutritional deficiency, particularly a need for iron.

David warns that the consumption of certain picas for cultural reasons can lead to infant and child developmental problems, with low verbal IQ scores, impaired hearing and motor skill development. “The neurological damage can be overwhelming,” she warns. She says a physician becomes concerned when food cravings replace good nutrition. “Then, a pregnant woman will fill up on the foods she craves and skip the nutritious foods her body and her baby really need. And, since, often, the foods women crave during pregnancy can be laden with empty calories, it can also lead to gaining too much weight,” she notes.

She advises, “If you do find yourself craving any non-food item, experts say see your doctor immediately and be tested for iron deficiency anaemia or other nutritional deficiencies such as zinc, which has also been linked to pica.”

What’s more, experts say our taste buds do actually play a role in how we interpret our body’s needs. David says studies show that the high hormone levels present during pregnancy can alter both a woman’s sense of taste and smell. So certain foods and odors can not only be more enticing but in some cases more offensive; a problem that often plays out as a pregnancy food aversion.

Experts further note that if a pregnant mom craves high-fat premium ice cream, chocolates, doughnuts and eating them all the time, her weight could blossom to an unhealthy level early in the pregnancy.

Diabetologist and Medical Director of Rainbow Specialist Medical Centre, Lekki Phase1, Lagos, Dr. Afokoghene Isiavwe, warns that if a pregnant woman is at risk of gestational diabetes (diabetes diagnosed during pregnancy that can affect the health of both baby and mom), giving in to high-sugar cravings could cause even more problems.

“With gestational diabetes, you not only have to watch weight gain, but also what you eat,” Isiakwe counsels.

Worse still is the result of a new research published in The FASEB Journal, which claims that women who eat junk food while pregnant give birth to babies who grow to love junk foods.

The researchers warn that junk food stimulates the production of opioids in the body (the same opioids found in abusive drugs like morphine and heroin), which can cross through the placenta and breast milk from mother to foetus.

To investigate how exposure to these junk food-induced opioids during foetal development affects babies’ food habits, Australian researchers studied the puppies of two groups of rats. During pregnancy and lactation, one group of rat-moms had eaten normal critter food, while the other ate a range of human junk foods, including chocolate biscuits and potato chips.

Once the experimental puppies were weaned, the researchers injected them with an opioid receptor blocker to prevent the junk foods from stimulating the release of dopamine in their bodies. “By curbing the junk foods’ feel-good effect, blocking opioid signaling lowers fat and sugar consumption,” the researchers claim.

They found that the opioid receptor blocker was less effective at reducing fat and sugar intake in the puppies of the junk-food-feeding mothers. Their mothers’ crude diet during pregnancy caused reduced sensitivity in the babies’ opioid signaling pathway, the researchers found. In turn, these babies, born with a higher tolerance for junk food, needed to eat more of it to achieve a junk-food high.

Lead researcher, Beverly Muhlhausler, from the FOODplus Research Centre at the School of Agriculture Food and Wine at The University of Adelaide, Australia, says, “In the same way that someone addicted to drugs has to consume more of the drug over time to achieve the same high, continually producing excess opioids by eating too much junk food also results in the need to consume more junk food to get the same pleasurable sensation.”

Experts say a healthy diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding can give your child a healthy start. Muhlhausler says previous studies have shown that eating specific foods during pregnancy and breastfeeding can result in the child preferring those foods later in life. “And a baby’s pre-birth nutrition can either prevent — or cause — chronic health conditions,” he warns.

A nutritionist who specialises in pregnancy and post-partum nutrition, Dr. Cassandra Forsythe, says, “Whenever you eat sugary foods, all the sugar sinks right into the baby, making them more insulin resistant, more likely to crave junk foods and more likely to struggle with their body weight, not to mention more likely to develop glucose disorders like diabetes.”

Doctors say a poor diet during pregnancy increases the child’s risk of obesity, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, autism, and attention deficit disorder at different stages of their life. Forsythe says adequate micronutrients, especially B vitamins, during foetal development, reduce the risk of neural tube, cardiac, or other birth defects.

Doctors say up to 90 per cent of pregnant women report food cravings, and sweets are at the top of their list. They counsel that to help manage cravings, pregnant women should consider taking a small amount of their picas.

The expectant women are also advised to eat small, healthy meals throughout the day to help maintain healthy blood sugar levels