A mother's high-calorie diet during pregnancy may program children to want more fatty foods Photo: Getty Images
Researchers believe that a high-calorie diet during pregnancy could permanently change the brain of the unborn baby and make it crave fat-rich foods in later life.
This in turn means that it is more likely to be an overweight child and suffer from other obesity-related conditions.
In a study of rats, the research team at Rockefeller University in New York found that exposure to a high-fat diet during pregnancy produces permanent changes in the offspring's brain.
"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," said senior author Sarah Leibowitz, who directs the Laboratory of Behavioural Neurobiology at the university.
"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.
"We're programming our children to be fat. I think it's very clear that there's vulnerability in the developing brain, and we've identified the site of this action where new neurons are being born."
The team looked at the effects of feeding pregnant rats a high-fat diet for two weeks compared with a balanced diet containing a moderate amount of fat.
The researchers found that rat pups born to mothers who consumed the high-fat diet, even after the diet had been removed at birth, ate more, weighed more throughout life, and began puberty earlier than those born to mothers who ate a balanced diet for the same two-week period.
They also had higher levels of triglycerides in the blood at birth and as adults and greater production of brain peptides that stimulate eating and weight gain. ( telegraph.co.uk )
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