Something doesn’t smell so great for moms to be.
There are tons of studies that show that what you eat while pregnant can affect your unborn baby, contributing to everything from stress to intelligence.
But new research has found that certain smells may actually affect your future child’s health — and put them more at risk for obesity in their lifetimes.
Wake up and smell the bacon? Hold off on that.
According to a study published in the journal Nature, smelling fatty foods during pregnancy could increase the risk of obesity in kids.
A team at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research fed pregnant mice a healthy diet that was low in fat but was enriched with fat-related odors from additional bacon-flavoring.
The results showed no changes to the mother’s metabolism. However, their offspring had more of a reaction and were more prone to developing obesity and insulin resistance, a sign of type 2 diabetes.
Apparently, being exposed to the smell of unhealthy foods while in the womb and through breastmilk was enough to trigger future obesity in the offspring.
Not only did the mother’s diet change their children’s physical health outcomes, it also affected their brains.
The neurons that control hunger and metabolism as well as the dopamine system that regulates reward and motivation were both affected by high-fat food, making the brains of the newborn mice look like those of obese mice.
While the study only looked at animals, the research is promising to rethinking fetal health.
“Until now, the focus has mostly been on maternal health and the negative effects of eating a high-fat diet, such as the risk of gaining too much weight,” said study lead Sophie Steculorum. “But our results suggest that the smells fetuses and newborns are exposed to could influence their health later in life independently of their mother’s health.”
Past research has shown that overweight mothers increase their child’s risk of becoming obese or carrying excess weight.
But it wasn’t just smelling the fatty foods that led to a higher risk of obesity in the new children. The mother mice also ate the foods containing fatty odors.
Fatty foods can include foods that contain both healthy and unhealthy saturated fats.
But while some are good for you (think avocados), others like butter, cheese and red meat can increase the risk of heart disease.
