Pregnancy High Fat Diet May Lead To Obesity In Child

Pregnancy Over 40,Watch Your Fat Intake

It seems like everyone worries about what to eat when you're pregnant.

Visit www.getpregnantover40.com for more pregnancy over 40 articles 

 More and more research is showing that what you eat can have longterm consequences for your child. This article talks about the connection between a high fat diet in pregnancy and obesity in the child. Read more:

"We've shown that short-term exposure to a high-fat diet in utero produces permanent neurons in the fetal brain that later increase the appetite for fat," says senior author Sarah F. Leibowitz, who directs the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurobiology at Rockefeller. "This work provides the first evidence for a fetal program that links high levels of fats circulating in the mother's blood during pregnancy to the overeating and increased weight gain of offspring after weaning."

from:  (www.news.medical.net)

THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR PREGNANCY DIET

Pregnancy Over 40, Good Diet Protects Your Child Too

After reading the article below, I'm so happy I ate a healthy diet before, during and after I conceived my daughter.
 Apparently, a healthy diet high in fruits and vegetables can protect your baby from future cancer. Read more:

There may be another reason for pregnant and nursing women to eat a nutritious diet that includes generous amounts of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage - it could help protect their children from cancer, both as infants and later in life.

SEE ALSO FOODS FOR FERTILITY AND PREGANCY (getpregnantover40.com)

A new study by scientists from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, done with laboratory mice, found that supplements of a key phytochemical found in certain vegetables provided a very high level of protection against leukemia and lymphoma in young animals, and also significantly protected against lung cancer during the rodent's equivalent of middle age.


The research, published in the journal Carcinogenesis, is one of the first of its type to demonstrate that diet may play a protective role in a fight against cancer that may begin - and could be won or lost - well before a person is ever born. And some of the protective benefits may last into adulthood

 sciencenewsden.com

PREGNANCY DIET TO AVOID OBESITY: ANTIOXIDANTS KEY

Pregnancy Over 40 and Antioxidants

Eating and supplementing your diet with antioxidants my be especially important during pregnancy.
 I've heard that the obesity epidemic in this country is partly due to the lifestyle and high fat high carb diet, but also it can partially be attributed to the mother's prenatal diet (and whether or not the mother was overweight or obese before pregnancy. This study talks about how it could prevent diabetes and obesity in your baby.

See Also: Foods for Fertility and Pregnancy (www.get pregnant over 40.com)

From the article:

NaturalNews) Antioxidants play a crucial role in preventing the onset of disease, and they can make all the difference in determining whether or not children develop glucose intolerance or become obese. According to a new study out of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHP), women who consume high amounts of antioxidants before and during their pregnancies may be protecting their children against diabetes and obesity.
Noting that diets high in bad fats and carbohydrates cause harmful oxidative stress that leads to obesity and diabetes, researchers decided to study the effect that antioxidants have in mitigating their onset. The team fed four groups of test rats either a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet, or a healthier and more balanced diet. The first two groups received such diets with no additional antioxidants, while the other two received extra antioxidants with their diets.
At the conclusion of the study, the group eating the unhealthy "Western" diet with no added antioxidants had significantly higher rates of inflammation and oxidative stress than the other groups, and their offspring were larger and had highers rates of glucose intolerance. The Western diet group that consumed added antioxidants, however, produced offspring with markedly lower rates of glucose intolerance and no obesity whatsoever -- and these conditions persisted even after two months.

excerpted from
www.naturalnews.com

PREGNANCY DIET: JUNK FOOD LEADS TO OBESITY IN KIDS

Junk food in pregnancy and obesity in kids

We all know that junk food is bad for your overall health. However, if you're pregnant or lactating, eating junk food could affect your offspring. Although the study mentioned in the article below was not done on humans, it certainly makes a case for eating a healthy diet while pregnant and nursing.
See also: www.getpregnantover40.com for more on foods for fertility and detoxification 
 Read more:

This study shows that a maternal junk food diet during pregnancy and lactation may be an important contributing factor in the development of obesity," they write in the British Journal of Nutrition.

The researchers also put it more bluntly, stating that women shouldn't see pregnancy and breastfeeding as "an opportunity to overindulge in fatty, sugary, and salty foods on the misguided assumption that they are 'eating for two."
(www.cbsnews.com)

Food Cravings In Pregnancy

Pregnancy Over 40, Do Food Cravings Indicate Deficiencies?

Contrary to what you hear in the popular media, I've never heard of anyone craving pickles and ice cream when pregnant (well... maybe the ice cream).
Also visit: www.getpregnantover40.com for my series on fertility foods

Personally I couldn't eat enough oranges, other than that, just about anything edible looked great to me when I was pregnant. I was constantly famished and when you're really hungry, all of a sudden all sorts of foods become your favorites (aside from a few pungent foods that make you gag). Anyway, click on the link below to read more about how to deal with food cravings:

 What do Food Cravings Mean?
Nutritionists and healthcare practitioners believe that there may be a connection between cravings and certain deficiencies in the body. Sometimes, though, this connection is unexplained, because the craved food cannot provide the deficient vitamin or mineral.

• Ice craving seems to indicate iron deficiency, even though this item does not contain iron
• Chocolate craving is supposedly connected to deficiency of vitamins from the B complex
• Red meat indicates a lack of proteins in the pregnancy diet
• Peach craving is related to beta carotene deficiency

Cravings disappear when taking flax oil, but this is most common in women who need more essential fatty acids. 
from: 3fatchicks.com