A new study conducted in New York reveals that the consumption of ultra-processed foods by expecting mothers has a higher risk of affecting their offspring with obesity or being overweight than any other lifestyle element.
Researchers, including Yiqing Wang from Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, stated that “mothers might benefit from limiting their intake of ultra-processed foods, and that dietary guidelines should be revised and financial and social barriers removed to improve nutrition for women of childbearing age and reduce childhood obesity.“
The study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), compared mothers with lower intakes of junk foods to those who have higher consumption. Thus, the team came to the conclusion that those who have about 12.1 servings per day have an increased risk percentage of 26 compared to those who have the lowest serving of 3.4 per day.
Weight gain in adults is constantly associated with foods such as packaged chips and snacks, fizzy drinks, and sugary cereals.
Documents used for this specific study were referred from the Nurse’s Health Study II (NHS II) and the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS I and II) located in the US. This data contained information about 19,958 children born to 14,553 mothers.
What The Study Revealed
The NHS II is a continuing study that tracks the lifestyles and health of 116,429 female nurses in the United States who were registered between the ages of 25 and 42 in 1989. From the beginning of 1991, participants were required to record what they ate and drank in a validated food frequency questionnaire every four years.
The cause of obesity in children due to the consumption of processed foods by their mothers is yet to be discovered by scientists.
In another analysis conducted, 2790 mothers and 2925 kids were studied based on their diets. The information was taken from mothers starting from 3 months of pre-conception to the time of delivery (peripregnancy).
The results demonstrated that the junk food intake peripregnancy was not associated with the offspring’s being overweight or obese.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School said that more work is required to confirm this theory and also to comprehend the factors responsible for it.
The most recent reports produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 show a record of 39 million children being overweight or obese. Obesity will further lead to heart diseases, diabetes, cancer, and even early death.
Usually, processed foods such as fried chips, snacks, and many other sugary treats are normally found in western diets and are known to increase weight in adults.
The team also takes into account a wide range of potential and influential factors connected to child obesity. mother’s weight (BMI), smoking, lifestyle, living status (with spouse or not), partner’s education, and finally, children’s processed food consumption.
10918 children aged between 7 and 17 after their NHS II participation were enrolled in the GUTS II trial in 2004. The trial period extended from 2006 to 2008 and 2011, as well as every two years after that.
The research team referred not just to one but multiple data points from multiple studies, with great efforts to comprise a detailed assessment of diets and their effects on the body for a long period. Hence, it comes as no surprise to say that the results turned out to be very sturdy.
Still, they do not completely provide a clear-cut mechanism for these studies, as according to them, the area warrants further investigation.
These data “support the importance of refining dietary recommendations and the development of programmes to improve nutrition for women of reproductive age to promote offspring health,” they conclude.
Read More- According to research, being overweight increases the chance of COVID-19 infection.
