Study suggests junk food mums risk health of child

by Rich Bowden - Jul 1 2008, 00:38

Mothers who eat junk food while pregnant or nursing their baby may cause long-term health problems for their children, a study on rats has suggested.

Photo: Fatty food. Credit: Spigoo/Flickr

Stéphanie Bayol and Neil Stickland, from the Royal Veterinary College in London, discovered that if they fed female rats processed food during pregnancy and lactation, not only were their offspring born with a taste for junk food, but they had a variety of medical complaints associated with fatty food intake even if they ate healthily themselves.The rats were shown to have raised cholesterol and triglyceride levels – both associated with heart disease - as well as high insulin and glucose in the blood, a cause of type-2 diabetes. The rats were also significant larger than normal with extra fat around the kidneys, another diabetes risk-factor."It seems that a mother's diet whilst pregnant and breastfeeding is very important for the long term health of her child," says Dr Bayol. "This does not mean that obesity and poor health is inevitable and it is important that we take care of ourselves and live a healthy lifestyle. But it does mean that mothers must eat responsibly whilst pregnant."
There is a probable likelihood that the results in the experiments with rats will also translate to humans, said Professor Stickland. "Humans share a number of fundamental biological systems with rats, so there is good reason to assume the effects we see in rats may be repeated in humans," he says. "Our research certainly tallies with epidemiological studies linking children's weight to that of their parents."
The research is published in the Journal of Physiology.

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