The Diet Quality Index provides positive scores for grains, vegetables, fruits, folate, iron and calcium, and negative scores for calories from fats or sweets. The Mediterranean Diet emphasizes legumes, grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables and fish, and discourages dairy, meat and sweets.
Mothers who scored in the top 25 percent of dietary quality had a significantly lower risk of having a baby born with a heart defect, compared with those who scored in the bottom 25 percent, the study found.
Eating right appears to boost the mother’s health, which in turn boosts the likelihood that the developing fetus will be able to withstand genetic or environmental factors that might cause a heart defect, Botto said.
“We know that having a healthy woman tends to lead to a healthy baby,” he said.
The findings support the need for women to eat a healthful diet even before they have conceived, since birth defects can occur very early in pregnancy. If a woman waits to eat right after she’s pregnant, it could be too late, the researchers said.
“We know that birth defects happen in the very first weeks after conception. For heart anomalies, the first four to seven weeks,” Botto noted.
Dr. Edward McCabe, senior vice president and medical director of the March of Dimes, agreed.
“It would be great if all women of childbearing age, for their own benefit and their future child’s benefit, could be on an optimal diet,” McCabe said. “If not, then plan and get on a diet for a year before you conceive.”
By extension, this strategy also calls for strong family planning, so a woman can take the time to establish a solid dietary foundation for her pregnancy if she isn’t already eating healthy, he added.
“One of the key messages to me is the importance of planning to have a baby,” McCabe said. “Fifty percent of the babies in the U.S. are not planned. We really feel it’s important for women to plan their pregnancy, and we know it’s important for them to be on an optimal diet before they become pregnant.”
Despite the study results, both Botto and McCabe noted that at this time researchers still don’t know exactly why a healthy diet appears to provide such strong protection against birth defects.
“We don’t know why it works, but we know it works,” McCabe said. ‘People can go on researching the cause for decades, but even if we don’t know the cause, we know the cure.”
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