You’ve heard a lot about the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, but did you know that a diet rich in these natural foods can be key to having a healthy pregnancy?
This prospective study was conducted over a period of 17 months on a random sample of pregnant women between 18 and 45 years of age who were in the first half of their pregnancies and who had agreed to attend prenatal clinics in any of five hospitals affiliated with universities of medical sciences in different districts of Tehran, Iran.
Participants’ dietary intakes were assessed during the 6th week of pregnancy using a 168-item, validated, semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Between 24 and 28 weeks of gestation, all participants underwent a scheduled oral glucose tolerance test to determine whether or not they had gestational diabetes mellitus. The diagnosis of GDM was based on criteria set by the American Diabetes Association.
Fruits and Veggies Lower Gestational Diabetes Risk
Of 1,026 study participants, 71 tested positive for gestational diabetes mellitus. Based on results of BMI (body-mass index) tests and the results of the food questionnaires, researchers determined that a diet high in fruit and vegetable intake was “significantly and inversely associated with GDM risk.”
Other studies have produced similar findings. A prospective cohort study published in November 2018 followed 1,337 pregnant women in Western China, assessing dietary intakes at 15–20 weeks of gestation with a validated food frequency questionnaire and determining GDM with oral glucose tolerance tests at 24–28 weeks of gestation.
Results of the study were determined via a cross-sectional analysis, showing that of the 281 participants, a total of 155 women had normal glucose tolerance and 126 had abnormal glucose tolerance. Women with abnormal glucose tolerance had significantly fewer fruits and vegetables in their diets and tended to have lower fruit servings than women with normal glucose tolerance.
Leafy Greens and Dark Yellow Vegetables Lower Diabetes Risk
Researchers from Harvard and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention partnered to explore the dietary connection between fruit and vegetable intake and women at risk of Type 2 diabetes, once referred to as adult-onset diabetes but now occurring more frequently in children as well.
In the 2004 study chaired by Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, researchers analyzed prospective data from the Women’s Health Study (WHS) taken from 1993–2003. They sought to evaluate the hypothesis that a high intake of fruits and vegetables protects against onset of Type 2 diabetes and to explore whether specific subgroups of fruits and vegetables differentially affect diabetes risk.
Participants were asked to accurately reflect their long-term dietary intake as a way of establishing good validity for the data. The average daily intake of individual fruits and vegetables was calculated by multiplying intake frequency by portion size, with total intake computed by summing the intake of individual items.