"High-Fat Prenatal Diet Leads to Early Puberty and Obesity in Offspring"

[NettleTea]

http://www.naturalnews.com/025282.html

Rats whose mothers had been fed a high-fat diet reached puberty faster than rats whose mothers had consumed a healthier diet, regardless of what the rats themselves were eating

So, do you think the rats were being fed TF fats or just bad fats?

[lastrid]

I'm sure it wasn't pastured animal fat they were testing out. Probably rancid vegetable oils and hormone-laden animal fat (because we all know that all fats are exactly the same and BAD for you).

[Metasequoia]

High fat what, exactly? Whole milk from cows pumped full of growth hormone?

[Ruthla]

I'd also like to know what the "high fat" diet looked like. Was it higher in total calories than the "normal" diet, lower in protein, etc. How many carbs were they eating along with the higher fat?

And, in the end, remember that they're studying rats, not humans.

I never made any effort to eat low-fat while pg, and my daughters are about the latest to reach puberty of their peers.

[bri276]

yeah, but did they have higher rates of atherosclerosis?

I can't find the full text anywhere, or even an abstract. I hope it becomes available for free, wouldn't want to pay $30 just to find out they were fed hydrogenated soybean oil.

[guestmama9910]

Logging into PubMed, it turns out this is very old news. I found "A maternal diet high in n - 6 polyunsaturated fats alters mammary gland development, puberty onset, and breast cancer risk among female rat offspring." out of theLombardi Cancer Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007, USA, dating back to 1997. The part of this study I imagine you are most interested in is as follows:

Pregnant rats were fed isocaloric diets containing 12% or 16% (low fat) or 43% or 46% (high fat) of calories from corn oil, which primarily contains the n - 6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) linoleic acid, throughout pregnancy.

As for the study in question: "Maternal nutritional history predicts obesity in adult offspring independent of postnatal diet." from "Liggins Institute and The National Research Centre for Growth and Development," specifically the following researchers: Howie GJ, Sloboda DM, Kamal T, and Vickers MH. The abstract of the publication (which has been epublished ahead of print date) is as follows:

Significant alterations in maternal nutrition may induce long-term metabolic consequences in offspring, in particular obesity and leptin and insulin resistance. Although maternal nutrient deprivation has been well characterized in this context, there is a relative paucity of data on how high fat (HF) nutrition impacts the subsequent generation. The present study investigated the effects of maternal HF nutrition either throughout the mother's life up to and including pregnancy and lactation or HF nutrition restricted to pregnancy and lactation, on growth and metabolic parameters in male and female offspring. Virgin Wistar rats were assigned to 1 of 3 experimental groups: 1) Controls (CONT): dams fed a standard chow diet throughout their life and throughout pregnancy and lactation; 2) Maternal high fat (MHF) group: dams fed a HF diet from weaning up to and throughout pregnancy and lactation; and 3) Pregnancy and lactation high fat (PLHF): dams fed a chow diet through their life until conception and then fed a HF diet throughout pregnancy and lactation. At weaning, all offspring were fed either a chow or HF diet for the remainder of the study (160 days). Litter size and sex ratios were not significantly different between the groups. MHF and PLHF offspring had significantly lower bodyweights and were hypoleptinemic and hypoinsulinemic at birth compared to CONT offspring. As adults however, chow-fed MHF and PLHF offspring were significantly more obese than CONT offspring (DEXA scanning at day 150, p<0.001 for maternal HF diet). As expected a post-weaning HF diet resulted in increased adiposity in all groups; MHF and PLHF offspring however always remained significantly more obese than CONT offspring. Increased adiposity in MHF and PLHF offspring was paralleled by hyperinsulinemia and hyperleptinemia (p<0.001; MHF and PLHF versus CONT). It is of interest that a lifetime of HF nutrition produced a similar offspring phenotype to HF nutrition restricted to pregnancy and lactation alone; thus suggesting that the postnatal sequelae of maternal HF nutrition occurs independent of pre-conceptional diet. These data further reinforce the importance of maternal nutrition during these critical windows of development and show that maternal HF feeding can induce a markedly obese phenotype in male and female offspring completely independent of postnatal nutrition.

I'm afraid I do not have access to the Journal of Physiology itself in order to read the full study, and it is not yet represented on the Journal of Physiology website. Food for thought, however, researchers are trained in statistics, specifically identifying and controlling for compounding variables, and they do list the exact nature of the fats used. Frankly, they are not responsible for the fact that the resulting sound bite is "fat = bad," when they have specifically tested on particular type (the damning fact in this case is that polyunsaturated fats, the ones currently deemed healthy by most, were exactly the ones tested). It's specious to assume that the fats they used were rancid or otherwise poor quality.

Further food for thought, I noted the following studies on PubMed while looking for further information on the study at hand:

• Evidence that a maternal "junk food" diet during pregnancy and lactation can reduce muscle force in offspring.
• Long-term consequences of maternal high-fat feeding on hypothalamic leptin sensitivity and diet-induced obesity in the offspring.
• A high-fat diet during rat pregnancy or suckling induces cardiovascular dysfunction in adult offspring.
• Developmental programming of aortic and renal structure in offspring of rats fed fat-rich diets in pregnancy.
• Impaired glucose homeostasis and mitochondrial abnormalities in offspring of rats fed a fat-rich diet in pregnancy.

I could go on. Our children may be healthy, but the plural of "anecdote" is not "data."
--
AnnaArcturus

[NettleTea]

Thanks for the info, Anna.

[Ruthla]

Ah, so the title should read "Diet High in Omega-6 Unsaturated Fats Leads to Early Puberty and Obesity in Offspring."

[auntieM]

Originally Posted by Ruthla

Ah, so the title should read "Diet High in Omega-6 Unsaturated Fats Leads to Early Puberty and Obesity in Offspring."

also, I would add to this: in rats.

[AJP]

Originally Posted by auntieM

also, I would add to this: in rats.

And this: living in a lab cage, eating highly-processed "chow".

Granted, a large number of humans do eat diets high in omega-6 PUFAs, eat other highly processed "chow", and spend a lot of time in lab-cage-like surrounds. So maybe this applies to them.

[tanyalynn]

Originally Posted by AJP

And this: living in a lab cage, eating highly-processed "chow".

Granted, a large number of humans do eat diets high in omega-6 PUFAs, eat other highly processed "chow", and spend a lot of time in lab-cage-like surrounds. So maybe this applies to them.

Actually this is what I was thinking. And sad to say, til a couple years ago, our diet bore far too much resemblance to this.

[godusjourney]

I also have to point out a point made above. Rats. Not even close to being related to humans. I have yet to understand why they test on animals at all, being that our body chemistry is so drastically different. I'm guessing rats wouldn't be marvelously healthy eating a super-duper clean TF diet, either. Why? They're rats!

[Magelet]

hydrogenated lard is the fat the fed rats?

Since this is a rather long post, the gist of it for those who want brevity is that they were feeding the rats hydrogenated lard and soy-based vegetable oil. thus not relevant to those of us eating TF fats.


I believe this is the recent study that we're talking about: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/28/46/12107

I was interested to know what exactly they were feeding those rats, so I looked it up.

Now, its a rather scary sounding diet anyways (domino sugar, cornstartch, dextrin, casein protein, and supplemented salt and vitamins, in addition to the fat components), however, looking at the fat portion is revealing. The low fat group's fat was replaced with extra carbohydrates. The fat for both groups was a combination of Armour Lard and Wesson Vegetable oil. I wondered, since of course, lard is a healthy fat, but I wasn't sure their brand was, you know, REAL lard.

Now, tracking down Armour lard has proven slightly difficult to do. Wikipedia's article on Armour & Co is fairly representative of the company's whereabouts: all over the place, and truely confusing. I was unsuccessful in tracking down who sells armour lard in the 20 min I spent looking for it, so I leave that to others, if they are interested.

However, I have seen scattered throughout the internet, evidence that Armour is chemically hydrogenated. Several places (walmart and a post in a forum) have lists of the ingredients, which are lard, hydrogenated lard, and preservatives (they list specific ones, but since they're all gobbledegook to me, I shan't bother listing them.)

so, I would say that this study has nothing whatsoever to say about TF fats. Also, the modern media has created some serious scientific problems. findings of studies are not traditionally considered reliable until SEVERAL studies have been done, all having the same results, and thus a single study, until recent media's penchant for sensationalizing scientific studies took hold, had little meaning. It meant that other scientists would study it to see if it really seemed to be true, not be taken as fact.


Here is the diet information copied directly from the study:

The BD was composed of 25% fat, consisting of 70% lard (Armour) and 30% vegetable oil (Wesson), and of 50% carbohydrate, consisting of 30% dextrin (MP Biomedicals), 30% cornstarch (VWR International), and 40% sucrose (Domino). The HFD was composed of 50% fat, consisting of 80% lard and 20% vegetable oil, and of 25% carbohydrate, consisting of 30% dextrin, 30% cornstarch, and 40% sucrose. Both diets contained 25% protein, composed of casein (Bioserv) with 0.3% L-cystine and DL-methionine (MP Biomedicals), and were supplemented with 4% minerals (Briggs N Salt Mixture, MP Biomedicals) and 3% vitamins (Vitamin Diet Fortification Mixture, MP Biomedicals). These diets are nutritionally complete and found to have no detrimental effects on the health of the animals.

gotta love that statement "these diets are nutritionally complete and found to have no detrimental effects".... *

walmart ingredients list
anecdotal ingredients list