Chubby Babies Linked to Mom’s ‘B’havior

Can you imagine weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces at birth? That is the heaviest baby to have survived its birth on record. That’s a lot of baby!

Fortunately, 99.9 percent of babies born are no where near 22 pounds at birth, but if you’re anything like me, you likely have wondered why so many more babies are weighing in heavier today than in yesteryear. There’s no single factor that explains overweight newborns, I don’t think. But up to now, I never considered mothers deficient in Vitamin B as one of them.

According to researchers from the University of Nottingham, England, who published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mothers deficient in Vitamin B during pregnancy are more likely to deliver babies that are overweight.

Now, there’s no evidence to suggest that overweight babies go on to become overweight adults. In fact, many of us probably don’t see overweight babies as something of a good thing; after all, parents and family members have more baby to love. But an overweight baby can cause a domino effect, where an overweight baby becomes an overweight toddler, an overweight toddler becomes an overweight child, and an overweight child can lead to diseases that will impact their adult lives – like Type II diabetes, or hypertension.

Unlike the lion’s share of studies which typically involve lab rats, the University of Nottingham study involved 50 sheep. Yes, sheep. Twenty five of the sheep were given a well-balanced diet of typical sheep fare, while the 25 remaining sheep were fed a diet similar to the sheep on the well-balanced diet, only lacking in Vitamin B. After a number of weeks of balanced and imbalanced dieting among the sheep, the deficient sheep were artificially inseminated. A week after their artificial insemination, the embryos were removed from some the Vitamin B-deficient sheep and implanted into the sheep fed the well-balanced diet.

What they found at the conclusion of their study was that the Vitamin B-deficient sheep produced sheep that were heavier than the balanced-diet sheep (25 percent heavier) as well as sheep more susceptible to high blood pressure (i.e. hypertension) when they grow to become rams (the findings related most prevalently to adult male sheep).

Granted, findings in animals do not always translate to the same findings in humans, but past studies corroborate this study in so far as they all discuss the importance of Vitamin B to pregnant women.

That being the case, it’s recommended that pregnant women consume approximately 2.0 milligrams of Vitamin B per day. You probably already know that whole grain cereals contain quite a bit of Vitamin B, but other high Vitamin B food sources are proteins, particularly seafood, beef and poultry.

The great thing about Vitamin B is that it’s in virtually every vegetable, whole grain, bean or protein; Vitamin B encompasses a number of minerals and vitamins (Vitamin B1, or thiamin; B2, or riboflavin; B6, B7, or biotin; B12, niacin, folic acid and pantothenic acid).

Remember these vitamins the next time you’re scanning the nutritional charts.