Apparently breastfeeding mums who eat junk food are 'condemning their children to permanent damage from cholesterol and obesity'

[whomovedmychocolate]

Says a study quoted in today's independent.

Well I guess that makes some sense - rubbish in, rubbish out and all that. But hey what a lovely thing to write one paragraph about with no further explanation.

Also I thought cholesterol levels were transient and changeable - after all, if you cut your fat levels in your diet and/or take statins they can be reduced. Or does that benefit not transfer?

We just can't win, can we??

more infomation here

There's another thread about it here

Here's the full story:

MOTHERS WARNED OVER JUNK FOOD
Pregnant or breastfeeding mothers who live on junk food could be condemning their children to lifelong obesity and ill health. A study in the Journal of Physiology suggests a mother's poor diet can do irreversible damage to her child, including raised cholesterol and diabetes. The research was conducted on rats at the Royal Veterinary College in London, but researchers say the findings are likely to apply to humans.

That's certainly a full story

Can't bloody win. Don't know about you lot but aside from various rat like tendencies when left alone near chocolate buttons, my children tend to be humans . Think this is a load of twaddle.

Human mothers need more cholesterol during pregnancy anyway. I'm not saying go out and eat at a burger bar every day but tomorrow's study will no doubt point out the dangers of undernourished mummies so keen to stay size zero that they are damaging the health of themselves and their little ones

So how much junk food do you have to eat in order to condemn your child to a permanent damage from cholesterol and obesity? Is it the odd chip or do you need to be in McD's every day?

I expect the study was just examining the relation of mother's diet when breastfeeding to child's health which is fair enough. However, the headline implies that the Kebab houses of Britain are full of women breastfeeding and makes a subliminal link to current fears about childhood obesity. I would be interested how the study was carried out. Its my impression that most bf studies aren't carried out in the UK because there just aren't high enough levels of breastfeeding, so I expect the women with poor diets weren't surviving on fish suppers.

Brangelina - I mean that's the full story from the Indie I did say it was only one para. Am surprised their columnist Johan Hari hasn't had a pop about it yet though.....

Cross posted. Aha. Carried out on rats.

Oooh, the phrase "pregnant or breastfeeding" always makes me cross - so often used on medicines, and shorthand for "can't be bothered to do enough research to show the surely very different levels of risk in these two VERY DIFFERENT states"!

It's on the BBC site too. I eat a LOT of junk when pregnant - so does Gwyneth Paltrow, according to her - she said brown rice and tofu made her sick. Wonder if she will have fat children. Seems quite unlikely...

WMMC, I was being facetious. It's not a lot to go on, I thought it was quite poor.

I don't think it's a question of the odd chip but more a case of gorging onself on McD's on a frequent basis. I also don't think it's a calorie issue, just a quality of the calories issue, i.e. you can still pig yourself out, but make sure it's quality piggyness and not hydrogentaed fat vitamin vacuums. That's the way I understood it anyway.

Surely junk food is bad for everybody?

yes JoyS,

Had lots of cravings for cheeseburgers when pregnant. Desisted in the main because DH hates MacDonalds with a vengeance as he thinks the company is Immoral and he would have had a fit if he thought I was feeding Big Macs to our precious unborn son. Probably a good thing not to have eaten very many then...

LOL! I eat pizza take out for dinner x1 per week, my 14wk old dd2 is 17lb, imagine what would happen if I ate more junk!

How many breastfeeding mums really eat super healthy? I know I have mega chocolate cravings, and, certainly in the early days I didn't have time to make healthy food. Yet research also shows that formula fed babies are more likely to be obese than breastfed ones, doesn't it?

Anyway, I treat all press reports with scepticism until we can read the original article (which is not yet published, afaik!)

There is a good amount of research that shows breastmilk is of a routinely high quality, independent of the mother's diet, and changing the mother's diet makes very little difference...however, the type of fat in breastmilk does reflect the type of fat in the diet. That's about the only thing you could consciously change in your milk.

www.infactcanada.ca/fats.htm explains some of this, but we could do with some recent research on it. We need to know, for instance, that if a mother eats 'badly' in pregnancy, can she redress the balance by breastfeeding, or is 'the damage' done (if any)? Or what if the mother consciously eats 'well' in pregnancy, can she eat junk when bf without it having any impact?

Tiktok - can I ask you a question please? (sorry for hijack - I just know you know your stuff!). I'm still bf my 18 month old dd, and have always believed that breastmilk is of a routinely high quality as you say above... I was listening to some Mums chatting the other day and they were gossiping about someone who was bf, and saying the quality of her milk must be so poor because she's so tired. I've heard many people say that their milk was 'poor' - is this a myth? I was tired beyond belief when I was feeding every couple of hours through the night, but honestly believed that it was me that was suffering rather than my breast milk. Am I right? (sorry off topic - just wondering!!!)

happy, it's a powerful myth that breastmilk is affected by tiredness, and there is no evidence at all to back this up. Here's a paper that shows this:

www.lrc.asn.au/abstracts.html#2006 - you'll need to scroll down to read the abstract and the whole paper can be read on line , IIRC.

It would make no sense if breastmilk was fragile in this way - most of human life has been tiring in a way we would not even cope with in the 21st century. We had to evolve to produce quality milk whatever our circumstances, and certainly, the tests on milk that have been done show that more or less no matter what, milk is just fine...there are historical records of women breastfeeding under enormous fatigue and stress, even in recent history.

Tik, wrong type of fat, I suppose?

If eating healthily during pregnancy were so important, half of us wouldn't spend our 1st trimester puking up everything we eat.