As if cutting booze weren’t bad enough, the pregnancy diet just became even more limiting: A recent study of 1,068 mother-child pairs published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society found that children between the ages of 7 and 9 may be at greater risk for developing asthma, if their mothers drank lots of sugary drinks while pregnant.
After their first and second trimesters, participating mothers filled out questionnaires concerning their food and beverage consumption, including sodas and fruity drinks. Once their children reached early childhood (3.3 years), the mothers filled out another questionnaire to report their child’s food and beverage consumption — again, including sodas and fruity drinks. The researchers then analyzed results based on sugar-sweetened beverage and fructose (fruit sugar) consumption, and came upon some unfortunate findings.
Mothers with the highest sugar-sweetened beverage and fructose consumption (two servings of sugary drinks and 46 grams of fructose per day) were 63 and 61 percent more likely, respectively, to have kids with asthma than those with the lowest such consumption (zero servings of sugary drinks and 21 grams of fructose).
What a surprise… sugary drinks are awful for you and your kids!
It should be noted that this is an observational study, which means it doesn’t necessarily prove causation. The participants were also mostly from affluent families, so findings may not be applicable to socioeconomically disadvantaged families.
Still, it’s best to err on the side of caution since your kid’s health is, y’know, somewhat more important than your daily Coke fix.
A few other things we learned about our bodies today:
- Contrary to what we all thought, musicians are less prone to hallucination.
- Action video games improve cognitive abilities. Suck it, mom!
- Penguins used to be human-sized killing machines.
- Italians over the age of 90 are optimistic and stubborn.
- In today’s “no duh” news, window blinds — like everything else in the entire world — can hurt young kids.
Ian Lecklitner
Ian Lecklitner is a staff writer at MEL Magazine. He mostly writes about everyone's favorite things: Sex, drugs and food.
