Can a mother's diet during pregnancy affect her child's future weight?

A recent post on a Time blog describes new research that has indicated that mothers who had low carbohydrate diets during pregnancy bore children that showed changes in their DNA. The researchers then tied those genetic changes to body fat at age 6 and 9.

The research was published in the journal Diabetes and did not prove a cause and effect relationship. If you'd like to learn more, click here to view the abstract.

Mediterranean Diet Cuts Metabolic Syndrome Risk

An article on WebMD discusses a recent analysis published in the Journal of The American College of Cardiology. The study analyzed 50 studies comprising more than 500,000 people to show that the Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome.

Friday Roundup

These stories have been published in the last 7-10 days and have been categorized under subjects of interest.

Poverty
1. Recession raises poverty rate to a 15 year high, NYT.com, September 16, 2010

Brief Intro:"With the country in its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty in 2009, with the total reaching 44 million, or one in seven residents. Millions more were surviving only because of expanded unemployment insurance and other assistance."

2. Census: 1 in 7 Americans lives in poverty, Yahoo News, September 16, 2010

Brief Intro:" The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty.

The overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, the Census Bureau said Thursday in its annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. The report covers 2009, President Barack Obama's first year in office."

Health
1. Teaching doctors about nutrition and diet, NYT.com, September 16, 2010

Brief Intro: "Research has increasingly pointed to a link between the nutritional status of Americans and the chronic diseases that plague them. Between the growing list of diet-related diseases and a burgeoning obesity epidemic, the most important public health measure for any of us to take may well be watching what we eat.

But few doctors are prepared to effectively spearhead or even help in those efforts. In the mid-1980s, the National Academy of Sciences published a landmark report highlighting the lack of adequate nutrition education in medical schools; the writers recommended a minimum of 25 hours of nutrition instruction. Now, in a study published this month, it appears that even two and a half decades later a vast majority of medical schools still fail to meet the minimum recommended 25 hours of instruction."

2. Can exercise make kids smarter?, NYT.com, September 15, 2010

Brief Intro:"Previous studies found that fitter kids generally scored better on such tests. And in this case, too, those children performed better on the tests. But the M.R.I.’s provided a clearer picture of how it might work. They showed that fit children had significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and “executive control,” or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply. Since both groups of children had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, body mass index and other variables, the researchers concluded that being fit had enlarged that portion of their brains."

3. Number of insured drops for first time, CNN.com, September 16, 2010

Brief Intro:"The number of people with health insurance in the United States dropped for the first time in 23 years, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.

There were 253.6 million people with health insurance in 2009, the latest data available, down from 255.1 million a year earlier."