Challenges with developing nutritional recommendations to improve pregnancy outcomes
Susan Ozanne and colleagues argue that strategies are urgently needed to translate knowledge about how maternal nutrition affects children’s long term health into improved population health outcomes Nutrition is the most widely studied of the multiple maternal lifestyle factors that influence health of the next generation, which include exercise, smoking, stress, and socioeconomic factors.1 Recent insights include new understanding of how fetal epigenetics and genetics interact with maternal diet to shape risk of health outcomes such as childhood obesity and metabolic health. These insights are particularly valuable as more populations worldwide struggle with nutritional challenges, particularly in low and middle income settings. However, as in many aspects of pregnancy and early childhood research, clinical implementation lags frustratingly far behind mechanistic understanding. Nutritional advice currently given to pregnant women in UK clinical practice remains rudimentary and illustr
