Junk Food Is Bad For Babies

If you’re pregnant, try to eat healthy because eating junk food is bad for your baby. Duh. A study published in The Journal of Physiology found that female rats that were fed a diet of chips, cheese, muffins, and other processed foods throughout pregnancy and lactation had offspring that were overweight at birth and were born with a taste for junk food, kind of like babies whose moms used crack while they were in the womb. Female offspring were particularly affected by the mother’s diet. And don’t think this just applies to rodents: “Humans share a number of fundamental biological systems with rats, so there is good reason to assume the effects we see in rats may be repeated in humans,” said Neil Strickland, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College in London. [EurekAlert!]