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What your mum ate (or didn’t eat) while pregnant could still be making you fat

Troy Grogan
Monday, August 17, 2009
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Getty Images
Can a mother's eating habits while pregnant affect her child? A new study suggests, it might.

It's well known that rats that are underfed during pregnancy produce fat babies with metabolic problems.

To do the same studies with humans is difficult. Yet a “natural” experiment was provided during World War II when the German invasion of Holland resulted in a major famine over several months.

This has now enabled Dutch researchers to look at the offspring of mothers who were starved during pregnancy, some 60 years later, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Out of 730 men and women, there was a greater tendency to crave a high-fat diet than a similar group whose mothers were not starved. This is the first study to show that dietary preferences can be influenced even before birth. Consider the following Lifestyle Medicine healthy eating guide.


Your say: Do you think your mother's eating habits have affected your own? Share your comments below.



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User comments
I'm 62 and my mother was put on a very, very restrictive diet by her doctor when she was pregnant. The reason was that she was carrying too much weight for her height (under 5 ft tall and always around 7 stone in weight). She didn't know she was carrying twins and neither did the GP. When born we were both rather small - in the 4lb weight range each, though only 3 weeks early, and both have struggled to control our weight for a lot of our adult lives! This study has made me think!!
i believe this is true im starting to realise im more like my mother in many ways, body shape typical pear shape, craving the same foods she loves, deli meats proscitto, salami, loves tomatoes, smoked coed, anchovies we would both even breakout the next day years ago, now my body cant handle the fluid retention, creamy and custard desserts this is just some and she is so hormonal and so am i such an imbalance.
I think I have only dieted once in my life, in terms of counting kilojoules. My Mum has dieted on and off most of her adult life, and I think is has worsened underlying health problems she has like her thyroid, and caused other vitamin and mineral deficiencies. My GP will tell me to lose weight although I am only 5-10kgs overweight most of the time. The same GP also overlooked my iron being quite low, and said that it was "normal". I am unsure how "normal" hair falls out, and other symptoms I had of iron deficiency were "normal" according to this doctor!
I'm an Australian living in Paris and it is a lot harder to do physical exercise here than in Sydney. For cardio I walk for one hour three time a week on a treadmill with an uphill slant of 15% at 4,5km an hour. This is great for burning stored fat and helps you loose weight faster than running.

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