Birth weight is strongly affected by the mother’s own diet as a child

[bananas]

Source: Guardian

A woman’s diet in early life has more impact on her baby’s birth weight than the food she eats as an adult, researchers say.

<snip>

The findings emerged from a 30-year study that followed more than 3,000 pregnant women in the Philippines whose children have now begun to have babies of their own.

<snip>

The study suggested that a mother’s diet as an adult had no effect on her baby’s birth weight. Far more important were the mother’s health and nutrition as a baby and toddler, and even the grandmother’s diet when she was pregnant with the baby’s mother.

The work raises the prospect that a person’s health at birth is governed by a long history of health and nutrition going back more than a generation.

“Our findings add to growing evidence that the key to optimising the health of future generations is to promote good nutrition and health of the infants and young children who will be the next generation of mothers,” Kuzawa said.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/17/birth-weight-is-strongly-affected-by-the-mothers-own-diet-as-a-child/

[HockeyMom]

1. I weighed 98 lbs, before I had my first daughter

She was 7 lbs. Excuse me, medical science, but if Mom is that weight, Grandma weighed 85 lbs, and Dad was 135 lbs., you are talking about FOOD in pregnancy? Hello, ever heard of GENES? Plus if you are 5'1", Grandma 4'8", and Dad 5'8", what the frig do you expect? Oh, if we ATE right, we would all be perfect "Aryan" size? GET LOST.

[adieu]

2. I don't think you fully understood the claim being presented here

it's in a relatively new field of epigentics, which has been shown to occur in numerous examples. A number of geneticists, especially those who follow a rather traditional darwinian view of passing on heredity, are now seeing something that is akin to Lysenkoism and Lamarckism. The basic hypothesis is the heritability of acquired characteristics, a concept that would be complete heresy in evolutionary theory just 20 years ago.

But now, there have been more and more data showing that populations do pass down heritable genetic traits after acquiring those traits during the lifetime of the trait-passing generation (of course, the earlier towards birth the trait was acquired, the more likely that new trait could possibly be passed down).

[HockeyMom]

3. I LIKE being small

Tough. If you are healthy, what the hell difference does it make what your size is? This sounds far too much like the "perfect race" theory. Who started that? No, thank you. We don't need to be perfect according to science. I resent that.

[adieu]

6. Forget it. Trying to teach science to idiots is beyond my capabilities.

[HockeyMom]

7. My nickname in school was Bugs Bunny

and it wasn't because of my TEETH. I walked around eating carrots and celery when other kids (in the 50s) were eating Twinkees and Ding Dongs. I hated those things . I refused to eat fries and ate RAW potatoes and veggies. I would not eat burgers or most meat at all. Again, this was in the 50s before all this "health crap". I ate this way because it was my personal preference. What little kid know about SCIENCE? I didn't care as a kid, and not as an adult.

My kids still were born SHORT, thin, and not blue eyed, blondes either. You want to create the "perfect" (according to WHO?) human, go ahead. It didn't work in the 40s, and it won't work today either.

[El_Johns]

12. What is wrong with you? There's nothing in the article about creating some 'perfect' race. It's

about epigenetic effects, which apparently you've never heard of.

[adieu]

15. I'm sorry I replied to you in the first place

You're a nutcase, through and through.

[valerief]

14. Reading comprehension is hard. nt

[pnwmom]

11. Small and healthy is just fine. But low birth weight is often correlated with being less healthy

than average.

According to this research, a woman who was undernourished as a child may not provide the most nourishing womb environment for her future children.

So this would have little to do with you, assuming that you and your parents were well-nourished -- just naturally small.

[HockeyMom]

21. How heavy is "perfect"?

I was 6 lbs. in 1948. My Mom ate junk food diet in the 40s? It didn't exist then. My own kids were 7 and 7.5 lbs. and this was with me weighing 98 lbs. before pregnancies. Did I eat a good diet in the 70s and 80s then? I guess so since they were bigger than me when I was born. Or, MAYBE, it was because their bio father was 6'1 and 200 lbs. and they inherited some of HIS genes, unlike my own Dad's 135 lbs. and 5'8".

Super race is what all this sounds like to me.

[pnwmom]

22. I don't think there is a "perfect," unless it is the size a baby would be

if the mother (and according to this research) the grandmother had been adequately nourished as children and during their pregnancies.

My husband was about 6 pounds but that wasn't the right weight for him; it happened because his normal weight mother gained the then maximum allowed number of pounds (18 ) by 7 months and the doctor ordered her not to gain any more, telling her that if she did, he'd have to put her on a lettuce only diet.

[HockeyMom]

23. I gained 27 and 29 lbs back in the 70s and 80s

and lost all but 20 lbs 24 hours after giving birth. The nurses weighed me on two differences scales (both pregnancies) because they couldn't believe I lost that much. During both pregnancies I just ate the way I normally did. My OB, back then, said that was fine and I gained the "perfect" amount. While I myself was considered small, but then both my parents were themselves. My husband the father of my babies was not small by any stretch of the imagination. I think that was the reason my kids were bigger than me; not what either I ate, or my Mom ate.

MALE genetics play no factor in this? Sorry, I do not believe this.

[pnwmom]

24. Of course the male genetics played a factor. Your weight gain was exactly in the range

doctors today say to gain, by the way -- 25 - 35 pounds, with taller women at the higher end.

You gained a healthy amount of weight from a healthy diet, and so your baby achieved its healthy size -- between you and your much larger husband.

[al_liberal]

4. Alabama refuses to endorse this study.

The relaying of this information is exactly as I witnessed it yesterday at a local Waffle House. A very young and very pregnant employee was outside enjoying a smoke break from her shift. She was accompanied by a few of her co-workers apparently none of which could or would inform her that smoking while pregnant is VERY BAD for the fetus.

Disclaimer: I've eaten at Waffle House on several occasions because I've been drunk and they are open 24hrs. As a former Chicagoan I refuse to eat the godforsaken Krystals that are not a substitute for the original White Castle sliders.

[notadmblnd]

5. It doesn't matter what the mother's diet is while she is pregnant, but it matters what the grandmoth

diet was while she was pregnant with the mother. Is it me, or does this not make sense?

[HockeyMom]

8. My Mom was born in 1920

Non of this junk food existed when she was growing up or pg with me in 1948. So why was she or me SHORT? lol

[El_Johns]

10. It doesn't say the mother's diet doesn't matter. But the grandmother's diet also matters, because

there are effects, not just from diet, but from prenatal conditions generally, that persist through the generations.


Prenatal conditions affect genes, methylating or demethylating them, switching them off or on, changing their "settings".

This is turn affects the next generation.

Some background:

We talk about DNA as if it’s a template, like a mold for a car part in a factory...But DNA isn’t really like that. It’s more like a script. Think of Romeo and Juliet, for example. In 1936 George Cukor directed Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer in a film version. Sixty years later Baz Luhrmann directed Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes... Both productions used Shakespeare’s script, yet the two movies are entirely different. Identical starting points, different outcomes.

That’s what happens when cells read the genetic code that’s in DNA. The same script can result in different productions. The implications of this for human health are very wide-ranging, as we will see from the case studies we are going to look at in a moment. In all these case studies it’s really important to remember that nothing happened to the DNA blueprint of the people in these case studies. Their DNA didn’t change (mutate), and yet their life histories altered irrevocably in response to their environments.

Audrey Hepburn was a survivor of an event in World War II known as the Dutch Hunger Winter...The Dutch Hunger Winter lasted from the start of November 1944 to the late spring of 1945...A German blockade resulted in a catastrophic drop in the availability of food to the Dutch population. At one point the population was try­ing to survive on only about 30 percent of the normal daily calorie intake. People ate grass and tulip bulbs...More than 20,000 people had died by the time food supplies were restored in May 1945.

One of the first aspects they studied was the effect of the famine on the birth weights of children who had been in the womb during that terrible period. If a mother was well fed around the time of conception and malnourished only for the last few months of the pregnancy, her baby was likely to be born small. If, on the other hand, the mother suffered malnutrition only for the first three months of the pregnancy (because the baby was conceived toward the end of the terrible episode), but then was well fed, she was likely to have a normal-size baby. The fetus “caught up” in body weight.

...The babies who were born small stayed small all their lives, with lower obesity rates than the general popula­tion. For forty or more years, those people had access to as much food as they wanted, and yet their bodies never got over the early period of malnutrition. More unexpectedly, the children whose mothers had been malnourished only early in pregnancy had higher obesity rates than normal...

Even more extraordinarily, some of these effects seem to be present in the children of this group, that is, in the grandchildren of the women who were malnour­ished during the first three months of their pregnancy. So something that happened in one pregnant population affected their children’s children. That raised the really puzzling question of how those effects were passed on to subsequent generations.

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/142195/beyond-dna-epigenetics

[freshwest]

19. Thanks for posting that. It explains a number of things about myself, my mother and grandmother. n/t

[Mz Pip]

9. I didn't eat much when I was little

I was seriously underweight until I was about 11. I just didn't like to eat.

I gained 45 & 50 pounds respectively when I was pregnant. My boys were about 9 pounds each. I was 6 pounds 6 oz when I was born. At least for me, this study is crap.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. It says it's nutrition in the womb, as a baby and toddler

so your memories of how much you ate aren't really relevant - they're too late. If your parents say you were thought to be undernourished as a baby or toddler, that would be a point against this study.

The stats here put your birth weight at about the 25% percentile. It's unlikely you were undernourished.

[laundry_queen]

17. Interesting

Not sure I buy it, but interesting. I was 7lbs 4oz when I was born, and I was a pretty hefty toddler. I ate a lot of 'natural' foods because my grandparents owned a farm and my parents got organic, grass-fed beef and garden veggies from them. My 4 kids were: 6lbs13.5oz, 7lbs, 9lbs11oz, 7lbs8oz.

In my case, WHEN my babies were born made more of an impact. It's important to remember that babies gain a half pound for every week they are in utero in the last month or so. My 9lbs11oz baby was also my only 42 wk baby. My seven-pounders were 2 weeks early, my first and smallest was on time. If I would've gone to 42 weeks with all of them, they'd all be likely close to 9lbs. So WHEN a baby is born it its gestation matters too, not just it's weight at birth. If everyone is giving birth at 39 weeks vs 41 wks, babies are going to be smaller in the former group.

I always take these 'birth weight' studies with a grain of salt because when you are born (early or overdue) matters too.

[mackerel]

18. The study doesn't work for me either.

Middle class, college educated parents, born overseas at a high altitude. 4.5 lbs at birth, my mother was 6 lbs. My son a premie at 3.5 but my daughter was 15 days late at 10.5.

[jpak]

20. Epigenetics

yup