http://www.naturalnews.com/028526_prenatal_nutrition_diabets.html
A new study found that when pregnant women consume a higher amount of vegetables during pregnancy, their children have lower rates of type 1.
Pretty incredible. Of course, this isn't relevant in every case.. but it is one piece of the puzzle, and it might set the scene for a certain set of environmental (non-genetic) factors that can cause the exponential increase in type 1 diabetes we're seeing in the developed world.
These ‘studies’ drive me crazy. Eat more veggies and your kids won’t get type 1? Give me a break. An expectant mum can do everything ‘right’ including exercising during pregnancy, eating organic foods, and breastfeeding her new baby for a year or two and the little gaffer still aquires type 1. If only it were so simple.
Karen; there is no blame here. There is nothing preventable about type 1 diabetes.
But the more evidence we have about elements of prevention (be it vegetable consumption, vitamin d levels, breastfeeding, food allergies, etc.), the better we can understand the cause of the disease and the more we can do personally and as a society to curb the exponential increases in type 1 diabetes. Type 1 is increasing at a rate of 3% per year; clearly, there is more to this disease than genetics, and we need to figure out what the hell is going on.
Not disagreeing with you at all though; you remind me of my mother, who cares for so much and always did the best for me, and she hates when I talk about this kind of research too. She takes it personally, and I can’t blame her. It’s a natural reaction and I sympathize with it. Still, as a diabetic and as a nutritionist I think this stuff is very important.
All the best.
Now I realize that not everyone has access to the original study, so I will summarize the findings. The authors questioned over 21,000 pregnant women in sweden, asking them among other things on their vegetable intake. Of their children that were born, 191 were IA positive (a type 1 antibody, a risk factor for t1). In a univariate analysis it was found that women who ate less than 3-5 servings of veggies a week had modest but not particularly significant increase in IA positive. By this I mean that there were some more IA positive children for the non-veggie women, but there were too few samples to have much confidence in the result.
So my assessment. Wow, who in the world eats almost “NO” veggies? People that do probably have some more serious issues going on affecting their risk factors. And in either case, a univariate analysis with very little data with a huge amount of confounding factors is almost totally useless, squeezing wine directly from rocks.
See the abstract here (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122600085/abstract) and contrast it with the authors similar fairly null findings on vitamin D (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118545648/abstract).
I would always recommend that if you can obtain access to the actual studies that everyone try to get the actual information themselves and try to read this stuff with a critical eye. It is hard enough reading the media reports on this stuff, but sometimes even the studies are just kinda wacked.
That would be me… My parents never ate, or served, a single vegetable in our household (I doubt mom ate any while pregnant), unless it was Thanksgiving, which they made a lame looking salad of iceburg lettuce, tomato, and corn. lol And nothing else. I was born before Thanksgiving, Nov 11, so I doubt she ate any near then, either lol
I hope you are now eating “more” veggies. And certainly more than 3-5 servings a week.