According to a new Canadian report, published in JAMA Pediatrics, drinking diet soda and other artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy is associated with having overweight 1-year-olds.
The team studied 3,033 mothers who delivered healthy, single babies between 2009 and 2012 and had completed diet questionnaires during their pregnancies. They later examined the babies when they were a year old.
Nearly 30 percent of the women drank artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy.
After the team controlled for maternal body mass index, age, breastfeeding duration, maternal smoking, maternal diabetes, timing of the introduction of solid foods and other factors, they found that women who drank an average of one can of diet soda a day, compared to those who didn’t, doubled their risk of having an overweight 1 year old.
And they didn’t find an association of this weight with infant birth weight, which suggests that the effect is on postnatal, not fetal, growth. The mother’s consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks didn’t increase the risk for overweight babies.
Lead author, Meghan B Azad, assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, called this an association, but not a causal link, and one that certainly raises the question, “Are artificial sweeteners harmless?” No, they are not and many doctors, chiropractors, DO’s, MD’s, researchers, and other health specialists in the natural movement- or those willing to stand apart from the mainstream- have known this for some time. While the author doesn’t think these sweeteners should be banned or even that we should tell people NOT to consume them, I’ll tell you: DON’T CONSUME ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS! THEY ARE POISON!
You can break the habit and cycle of bad eating and be healthy my favorite Nuts! Click here to read how I got healthy years ago!!!
XO- Erin
Source: NY Times
