Did Nana Have a Healthy Diet? What Your Maternal Grandmother Ate Influences Your Health
Grandmothers are known for spoiling grandchildren with treats. It’s kind of their job. But if your maternal grandmother had a healthy diet outside of those exceptions, there’s good news in it for you.
Findings from a study conducted by a team led by Northwestern University’s Dr. Christopher Kuzawa suggest that women who ate a healthy diet while pregnant had children and grandchildren who were also healthier.
Dr. Kuzawa presented his findings at a recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The research team focused on 3,000 Filipino women since 1983 and the effect their diets had on their grandchildren, now in their late twenties, reports the New York Daily News.
“In general, measures of nutrition that were obtained when the mother was young or in utero herself were much stronger predictors of her baby’s birth weight than are her nutrition and diet during adulthood,” Dr. Kuzawa said at the meeting. “Quite a bit of converging evidence suggests that the quantity of calories you consume during pregnancy does not have a big effect on the baby. It is more about pre-pregnancy nutrition and nutrition during early development.”
So, it’s also good news if you yourself are going to be a grandmother one day. How you eat before your pregnancy can greatly benefit the health of your grandchildren. Which is, of course, as good a reason as any for spoiling them. As if you need one.
Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger
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Image used with permission by Richard Ettinger
