Dietary patterns in pregnancy and birth weight

Abstract

OBJECTIVE To analyze if dietary patterns during the third gestational trimester are associated with birth weight.METHODS Longitudinal study conducted in the cities of Petropolis and Queimados, Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Southeastern Brazil, between 2007 and 2008. We analyzed data from the first and second follow-up wave of a prospective cohort. Food consumption of 1,298 pregnant women was assessed using a semi-quantitative questionnaire about food frequency. Dietary patterns were obtained by exploratory factor analysis, using the Varimax rotation method. We also applied the multivariate linear regression model to estimate the association between food consumption patterns and birth weight.RESULTS Four patterns of consumption – which explain 36.4% of the variability – were identified and divided as follows: (1) prudent pattern (milk, yogurt, cheese, fruit and fresh-fruit juice, cracker, and chicken/beef/fish/liver), which explained 14.9% of the consumption; (2) traditional pattern, consisting of beans, rice, vegetables, breads, butter/margarine and sugar, which explained 8.8% of the variation in consumption; (3) Western pattern (potato/cassava/yams, macaroni, flour/farofa/grits, pizza/hamburger/deep fried pastries, soft drinks/cool drinks and pork/sausages/egg), which accounts for 6.9% of the variance; and (4) snack pattern (sandwich cookie, salty snacks, chocolate, and chocolate drink mix), which explains 5.7% of the consumption variability. The snack dietary pattern was positively associated with birth weight (β = 56.64; p = 0.04) in pregnant adolescents.CONCLUSIONS For pregnant adolescents, the greater the adherence to snack pattern during pregnancy, the greater the baby’s birth weight.

A maternal “mixed, high sugar” dietary pattern is associated with fetal growth

“…Further to the data from our setting, dietary patterns high in processed foods and/or sugar have been associated with maternal adiposity, GDM risk, and birth size in high‐income and low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs; Coelho et al, ; Englund‐Ögge et al, ; Guilloty et al, ; Sedaghat et al, ; Tielemans et al, ). It has also been suggested that the influence of maternal dietary practices on infant adiposity may persist into childhood.…”

“…Differences in the associations between dietary patterns during pregnancy and GWG in normal weight and overweight/obese women have been documented elsewhere (Hillesund, Bere, Haugen, & Øverby, 2014;Tielemans et al, 2015). Additionally, both positive and negative associations between energy dense, processed dietary patterns and birth weight have been shown in previous studies (Coelho, Cunha, Esteves, Lacerda, & Filha, 2015;Colón-Ramos et al, 2015;Knudsen, Orozova-Bekkevold, Mikkelsen, Wolff, & Olsen, 2008). This suggests that the complex associations between the in utero nutrition environment and offspring size and adiposity may be highly influenced by maternal nutritional status at baseline, as well as by weight gain during pregnancy.…”

A Mediterranean Diet with an Enhanced Consumption of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Pistachios Improves Pregnancy Outcomes in Women Without Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: A Sub-Analysis of the St. Carlos Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Prevention Study

“…Most studies evaluating the effect of maternal nutrition focus on its relationship with foetal growth [5,7,27,28]. Following a dietary pattern rich with a higher intake of fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry and lower intake of meat and fat of animal origin has been associated with lower small-for-gestational-age risk [5].…”

High cholesterol dietary intake during pregnancy is associated with large for gestational age in a sample of low‐income women of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“…Campos et al () evaluated 139 Brazilian pregnant adolescents and found that cholesterol intake during the second trimester was positively associated with birth weight, even after adjusting for confounding factors. Another longitudinal Brazilian study showed a positive association between a dietary pattern named “snack” and birth weight among 1,298 pregnant women (Coelho et al, ). Both studies are in agreement with our results.…”

“…Maternal dietary intake seems to be strongly associated with newborn birth weight (Campos et al, 2013;Coelho, Cunha, Esteves, Lacerda, & Theme, 2015) and appears to be positively associated with maternal weight gain, which can be considered a proxy for birth size. The effect of the lipid profile on the fetal growth was also reported (Schaefer-Graf et al, 2008;Ye et al, 2015), and there is a positive association between triglycerides and LDL-cholesterol and LGA births, while HDL-cholesterol shows an inverse directional relationship.…”