Moms-to-be, please note – think before you eat, for a new study says that having a bad diet during pregnancy raises the unborn child's risk of developing diabetes in later life by reducing their ability to store fat.Researchers claim that poor nutrition while in the womb makes the body less equipped to hold fats in the correct parts of the body, meaning they are more likely to build up in places where they can cause harm such as the liver and muscle, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.This raises the risk of diabetes and other age-related diseases in later stages of life, according to the researchers from Cambridge and Leicester Universities.Dr Susan Ozanne, who led the study, said: "It has been known for a while that your mother's diet during pregnancy plays an important role in your adult health. We have shown in detail how one mechanism links poor maternal diet to diabetes and other diseases that develop as we age."

The findings, published in the 'Cell Death and Differentiation' journal, found that people who had been exposed to a bad diet while in the womb had higher levels of a molecule in their body called mir-483-3p.
Rats who were fed a low-protein diet during pregnancy gave birth to offspring which also had high levels of the molecule, and they went on to develop smaller fat cells and were less able to store fat once fully grown.
When fed a high-calorie diet, the offspring were unlikely to gain excessive weight, but more likely to develop diabetes.

Prof Anne Willis, one of the researchers, said: "One of the ways that our bodies cope with a rich modern western diet is by storing excess calories in fat cells. When these cells aren't able to absorb the excess then fats get deposited in other places, like liver, where they are much more dangerous and can lead to type 2 diabetes."

Source:indianexpress.com