Eating Apples, Fish During Pregnancy Protects Kids From Allergies, Asthma
(HealthDay News, 5/21/07)

Saskia Willers of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues studied 1,212 children born to mothers who had completed dietary questionnaires in the third trimester of their pregnancies as part of the SEATON birth cohort conducted at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. When the children turned 5, the investigators gave them lung function and allergy tests and queried the moms on their children's respiratory symptoms and allergies, as well as dietary habits. The researchers found that children of moms who ate fish at least once a week while pregnant had a 43 % lower risk of developing eczema than the offspring of women who didn’t eat fish. In addition, the children of moms who consumed more than four apples weekly while pregnant had a 46 % lower risk of having asthma symptoms than children of those who ate one or no apples a week. These findings suggest that prenatal diet can affect allergic symptoms in children and specifically, eating apples and fish during pregnancy may protect the offspring from allergic diseases, like asthma and eczema.

(American Thoracic Society's International Conference in San Francisco. May 2007)