Expectant mothers should take proper care of their diet if they want to keep diabetes risk at bay for their children later in life!

It has been found that a poor diet during pregnancy may have an adverse effect on not only the health of the would-be mother, but may also increase the risk of diabetes for the offspring in their adulthood.

The link between maternal diet and Type 2 diabetes in offspring, when they grow up, has recently been highlighted in a new UK study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Even though diabetes largely affects people of the middle-age group, the new study suggests that susceptibility of the disease could be programmed into the cells of an unborn baby in case his or her mother does not take a healthy diet.

Speaking in more specific terms, an imbalanced maternal diet can compromise the long-term functioning of a gene – called Hnf4a - in the children, and even the grandchildren. The gene is believed to play a role in the development of the pancreas as well as in insulin production.

Despite the advantages of a healthy and well-balanced diet can never be denied for good health in general, University of Cambridge’s Dr Susan Ozanne mentioned the importance of “a healthy well-balanced diet during pregnancy” chiefly because it can have a notable effect on “the baby long-term and potentially even on the grandchildren as well.”