Study links vegetarian diet in pregnancy to substance abuse in offspring

Conclusion While having too little vitamin B12 in your diet during pregnancy can affect a baby's development, it remains to be proven whether a vegetarian diet in pregnancy can cause substance abuse problems in teenage offspring. The findings do not mean that vegetarian pregnant women need to start eating meat. It is already recommended that vegetarian and vegan mums-to-be take special care to ensure they get enough of certain nutrients that are found in meat and fish, such as vitamin B12, vitamin D and iron. The study identifies a possible link between having little or no meat consumption in pregnancy (which may have led to vitamin B12 deficiency) and substance abuse in the offspring, 15 years later. Substance abuse is a complicated problem, it is unlikely that one factor such as maternal diet in pregnancy could have caused it. However much the researchers tried to account for other potential confounding factors, it's very difficult to untangle the mother's diet in pregnancy from everything that happened between conception and the child's 15th birthday. More research is needed before we can come to more definitive conclusions. The study has some limitations that may affect the reliability of the results: Only half of the children invited to participate in the research at age 15 did so. We don't know what happened to the other half, or why they dropped out of the study. We don't know if their results would have supported or undermined the study findings. We don't know whether...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Pregnancy/child Source Type: news