Mom’s high fat diet makes fat babies

Moms who consume high trans fat diets while breastfeeding their babies increase the likelihood their children will be fat. Researchers from the University of Georgia found that infants whose mothers consumed 4.5 grams of trans fat per day were twice as likely to have high body fat, a condition knows to researchers as adiposity, than babies whose moms consumed less than that.

The data is published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers looked at various fatty acids in the diet, but honed in on trans fats as the big culprit. “Trans fats stuck out as a predictor to increased adiposity in both mothers and their babies,” said co-author Alex Anderson, assistant professor in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Usually breast milk is considered optimal for a newborn’s diet, but this study may change that wisdom. Depending on the mother’s diet, if the breast milk is going to be high in trans fats, then breast milk alone or even in combination with formula may not be recommended. A better understanding of how the mother’s intake of fats directly affects the baby would inform nutritionists as to what diet to recommend for individual babies. High body fat and obesity produce chronic illnesses that stress individuals, families and whole economies.

Interestingly, consumption of trans fats for the mother while she is breastfeeding has an impact on her lifelong weight. It appears that if a woman consumes 4.5 grams of trans fats while breastfeeding she increases her own risk of excessive fat accumulation by almost six times. This is independent of the weight gain caused by the pregnancy. Diet and weight gain while breastfeeding may have a lifelong impact unknown before this research.

“It would help to be able to follow the child from when the mother was pregnant, through birth, and then adolescence, so that we can confirm what the type of infant feeding and maternal diet during breastfeeding have to do with the recent epidemic of childhood obesity,” concluded Anderson.

Source: University of Georgia, ScienceDaily