View this email in your browser

By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #154: Obesity and the rising incidence of gestational diabetes

Follow me on Twitter: @foodhealthfactsFind all previously published Food and Health Facts here

There are countless explanations for the United States having the world’s highest childhood obesity rate, but one factor is becoming more prevalent: babies being exposed to diabetes while in utero.

A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association involved a review of more than 12 million first-time mothers in the United States. The study showed that the incidence of gestational diabetes – the onset of diabetes in the mother while pregnant – increased 3.7 percent per year from 2011 to 2019.

The cause? “I think the single greatest risk factor clearly is obesity,” the chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Ohio State University College of Medicine told The Washington Post. Indeed, a previous study showed that obese women are four times more likely to develop gestational diabetes than women at a healthy weight. (Among severely obese women, the incidence is eight times higher.)

In gestational diabetes, extra blood glucose from the mother is passed along to the baby. The baby’s pancreas then produces more insulin to rid itself of the blood glucose. “Since the baby is getting more energy than it needs to grow and develop,” explains the American Diabetes Association, “the extra energy is stored as fat.”

The effect on the child? “Babies born with excess insulin become children who are at risk for obesity and adults who are at risk of type 2 diabetes,” says the ADA. Indeed, one study has found that 40 percent of children born to mothers with gestational diabetes had become overweight by the age of 16, compared to just 8 percent among those whose mothers were a healthy weight.