editorial in today’s new york times citing research suggesting that, even in utero, the type of food affects subsequent eating habits and perhaps obesity (see link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/opinion/bad-eating-habits-start-in-the-womb.html?ref=opinion&_r=0). several interesting points:
–babies from mothers who ate healthily (varied diet) during pregnancy were subsequently more open to wide food range as children and adults. dietary patterns track from early childhood and once these patterns are formed, hard to change later
–researchers found that there are “sensitive periods” when taste preference develops, one of which is before 3 1/2 months of age (ie prior to infants getting solid foods). this therefore supports breast-feeding, since the infants are exposed to more flavor variety than is in formula. Maybe this early “sensitive period” is evolutionarily sound, since kids then encode for later life which foods they prefer to eat and are healthier. and maybe eating these foods may have a positive emotional impact later in life.
–australian study found that maternal exposure to junk food (energy-dense, high fat, palatable) led to children subsequently preferring these foods
–in rodents junk food exposure in utero and through breast milk led to less sensitive reward pathway in brain (ie, pregnant mothers fed fruit loops, cheetos, nutella had offspring with desensitization of the opioid receptor to sweet and fatty foods, presumably leading to increased tendency to ingest lots of junk foods to get the same “high” [maybe this ties in with the plethora of chronic pain/opiate emails/blogs i’ve sent out recently???? more addictive behaviors later in life?????], and perhaps to subsequent obesity
–in human babies, sweets have an analgesic effect (cry less, leave their hands in cold water longer), but in obese children sweets have less of an analgesic effect (supporting the opiate receptor desensitization finding in rodents noted above)
–so, hard to square claims by the food industry that it is personal responsibility in food choices is even harder to support since pretty unlikely that kids in utero and in infancy really have the ability to make a personal decision….. this claim is pretty spurious anyway, given the conscious and unconscious effects of advertising by food makers and the physical inaccessibility to good food in the “food deserts”, such as the inner city or much of rural America.
the data above, not so surprisingly, supports the importance of a good, basic diet, minimizing prepared foods, food additives, food substitutes, etc. ie, eat pretty much what your grandmother would have told you to eat.
but, as with all such studies, there is not a 100% correlation between early nutrition and subsequent eating habits of kids and adults. but i just wish that in my case more than 33.33% of my dear offspring ate some vegetables….. (and they were all breast-fed, good food with mostly fruits and vegetables, early childhood exposure to many different styles of cooking and differing flavors, almost no junk food… and they were even free-range to boot).
geoff