I came across this little horror story earlier today:
Fad dieters put unborn children at risk
Tim Radford in Lyon
Thursday April 10, 2003
The Guardian
The combination of fad diets for young women and fatty foods for their children could condemn future generations to an increased risk of diabetes and other afflictions, according to one of Britain's leading medical scientists.
Professor David Barker, head of the medical research council's epidemiology unit at Southampton University, said yesterday that heart disease and other illnesses could begin in the earliest stages of life in the womb. The food a mother eats before and during pregnancy could protect a child against heart attack, stroke or diabetes later in life.
But a low carbohydrate diet for young mothers and soft drinks, crisps and hamburgers for their children could spell future misery.
"That combination will fuel a continuing rise in diabetes," he said. "There are now 200 million people in the world with adult onset diabetes, and the prediction is that within a few years it will be 250 million."
Prof Barker, a father of eight, including four daughters, told the Biovision 2003 conference that evidence from well-fed Europe and the undernourished developing world told the same story.
"Why are mothers staying thin?" he asked. "Is it because they want to? In the west, the answer is yes. But in China and India there is a tradition of feeding male children at the expense of females and that practice won't just go away overnight, will it?
"The amazing thing in India is that we had the green revolution 40 years ago and the average birth weight of babies has not changed. But the average size of children has."
Paradoxically, western societies have prolonged life and shortened childhood. Girls in Finland used to begin menstruation at 17, but now do so at 10, because of improved nutrition. Fertility problems, however, seem to be on the increase.
"One guide to good nourishment is growth. That's what farmers use," Prof Barker said. "We know children in the US grow phenomenally, and I am not talking about fatness.
"All we know is that it is dependent on a balanced and varied diet. Even before birth, babies are sensitive to bodyweight and fat levels of their mother. A diet high in proteins and low in carbohydrates could create problems for the embryo, or even before that, for the egg."
His new book, The Best Start in Life, published on April 24 by Century, examines past evidence and new studies in both rich and poor societies.
"There is a clear link between thin women, and the way their babies handle sugar," he said. "Enough studies have been done on people, now in adult life, whose mother's thinness was recorded at their birth, to know that levels of thinness which might be fashionable are perceived by the baby."
He added: "The baby adopts a thrifty metabolism in relation to sugar, and that stays with it for life. That's fine if the child stays thin, but if the child does not, they are at risk.
"The combination of a thin mother and an obese offspring is dangerous."
A quarter of babies in Britain are born "thin". Their bodies have not stored sugar in the muscle, but kept it in the bloodstream to nourish the developing brain.
"The trouble about the human baby is that, compared to other mammals, it has such a big brain. So if it uses its store of sugar to help the brain develop, organs like the liver suffer quite disproportionately."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/...,933359,00.html
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A diet high in proteins and low in carbohydrates could create problems for the embryo, or even before that, for the egg."
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Hmmmm, so how did we manage to evolve in the first place, given that this would have been our staple diet as a Hunter Gatherer? How did theirr brains manage to survive without sugar?
and ...
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But a low carbohydrate diet for young mothers and soft drinks, crisps and hamburgers for their children could spell future misery.
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yes, I can understand the misery caused by the junk food given here as an example, but NOT from a low carb diet surely?
Fad dieters put unborn children at risk
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