High fat pregnancy diet could 'lead to obese children'

Pregnant women that consume a diet that is high in fat could affect the development of their baby's brain, resulting in increased chances of obesity within their child in later life. New research that involves animal studies has suggested that the amount of fat consumed by a pregnant woman could affect their child's weight when they are grown up by altering their brain.

Researchers from the Yale School of Medicine, US, have found that the diet consumed throughout pregnancy has the ability to alter the development of mice brains in the womb. It is possible, suggests the researchers, that this discovery explains why obese parents are more likely to have obese children. However, the effect that a high fat diet has upon humans in the womb has not yet been proven.

Published in the journal 'Cell', the new study found that pregnant mice who were fed a high-fat diet, gave birth to pups that had an altered hypothalamus. This part of the brain has been found to be important within the regulation of the metabolism. 

Pups born with this altered brain were found to have an increased chance of becoming overweight and of developing type 2 diabetes, when compared to the pups of the mothers that had consumed a normal diet throughout pregnancy.

Professor Tamas Horvath, one of the researchers that performed the study, told the BBC: "It could be a signal to the pup that it can grow bigger as the environment is plentiful in food.

"We definitely believe these are fundamental biological processes also affecting humans and influencing how children may eventually become obese.

"It seems, at least, that this could have a major impact and we need to explore it further in both animal and human studies."

Maintaining a normal and balanced diet throughout pregnancy could help to stop the cycle of obese parents having obese children from continuing, said Professor Horvath. The research could help to reduce the number of children that are obese, which is an increasing number throughout the UK.