Eating junk food while pregnant can make your child a junk food fiend

With a developing fetus at the mercy of its host body, women have every reason in the world to eat sensibly when they're pregnant.

And new research gives them another one: eating junk food while pregnant could turn your child into a junk food addict later in life.

Junk food junkies

Researchers from the FOODplus Research Centre at the School of Agriculture Food and Wine at The University of Adelaide in Australia found that babies of mothers who ate junk food during pregnancy had altered opioid receptors. Studying the pups of two groups of rats - one group that had been fed normal rat food during pregnancy and another that had been fed human junk food - they gave the rat offspring daily injections of an opioid receptor blocker.

By blocking the opioid signaling, the idea is that less fat and sugar will be consumed because the body is prevented from feeling the gratifying effects of dopamine. The junk food pups, however, showed that the opioid receptor blocker did not prevent fat and sugar intake, suggesting a lower sensitivity to opioids.

Children with lower sensitivity to opioids, the researchers conclude, could have a higher tolerance to junk food, needing more of it to produce the feel-good response.

"Junk food engages the same body chemistry as opium, morphine or heroin," said Gerald Weissmann, MD, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal. "Sad to say, junk food during pregnancy turns the kids into junk food junkies."

Source: Science Daily