Avoid Consuming Too Much Fat While Nursing

Avoid Consuming Too Much Fat While Nursing: The future health of offspring is more negatively impacted when their mothers consume a high fat diet while nursing compared with high-fat diet consumption during pregnancy, according to research at Johns Hopkins University. The researchers used a method called “cross-fostering” to determine whether prenatal or postnatal exposure to maternal high fat diet has a greater influence on the development of obesity and diabetes in the offspring. The researchers found that rat pups nursed by mothers consuming a high fat diet gained more body weight and were obese when weaned a few weeks later, even if the pup’s biological mother ate a low fat diet during pregnancy. In addition to being obese, pups nursed by foster mothers on a high fat diet displayed impaired glucose tolerance, an early indicator of diabetes. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), July 2010.