Drinking sugary beverages in pregnancy linked to kids’ later weight gain
Study is latest to look at impact of mom’s diet on children’s health
CAN THE SODA Elementary school age kids may be better off weightwise if moms avoid sugary drinks during pregnancy, a new study finds.
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An expectant mom might want to think twice about quenching her thirst with soda.
The more sugary beverages a mom drank during mid-pregnancy, the heavier her kids were in elementary school compared with kids whose mothers consumed less of the drinks, a new study finds. At age 8, boys and girls weighed approximately 0.25 kilograms more — about half a pound — with each serving mom added per day while pregnant, researchers report online July 10 in Pediatrics.
“What happens in early development really has a long-term impact,” says Meghan Azad, an epidemiologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada, who was not involved in the study. A fetus’s metabolism develops in response to the surrounding environment, including the maternal diet, she says.
The new findings come out of a larger project that studies the impact of pregnant moms’ diets on their kids’ health. &ldquo
