Poor Diet During Pregnancy Adversely Impacts on Baby

Research has uncovered that poor nutrition during early pregnancy can cause lifelong damage to the unborn baby’s brain.
The research which was undertaken on baboons discovered that restricting food intake to pregnant females had a great impact on the brain development of their young.
Another group of baboons was enabled to eat as much as they wanted.
The group that had restricted food found that their brain cells did not divide as they ought to. In addition, for the restricted intake group, connections between neurons were not made.
So a poor diet adversely impacts on the health of the foetal brain.
It is already known that extremely inadequate nutrition, as in famines, severely restricts foetal brain development.
This research highlights the link between good maternal health and diet. It also emphasises that poor diets in pregnancy can alter the development of foetal organs, in ways which will have a lifelong impact on children, potentially reducing IQ and bringing about behavioural problems.