Maternal diet . . . and other stories

Diet in mothers and children

Maternal diet influences fetal development and may have a lifelong impact on the offspring’s susceptibility to disease. But follow-up of a national birth cohort from Denmark shows that mothers who ate a healthy diet while pregnant bring their children up to eat a healthy diet too. In 20 000 mother-offspring pairs, a high quality diet score in the pregnant mother strongly predicted a high quality score in the offspring at the age of 14 (PLoS Med doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002911). Studies of diseases such as obesity and asthma, which are thought to have their origins in fetal development, may need to find ways to …