Diet during Pregnancy and Gestational Weight Gain in a Michigan Pregnancy Cohort

Gestational weight gain (GWG) has important health implications for both the mother and offspring. Maternal diet during pregnancy may play an important role in achieving adequate GWG, although its precise role is unclear.

Associations between maternal dietary components (fruits and vegetables, added sugar, percentage energy from fat, dairy) and GWG were examined in 327 pregnant women from the Archive for Research on Child Health cohort.

Self-reported usual dietary intake was assessed with validated dietary screening tools at the first prenatal visit. GWG was obtained from the birth certificate and was categorized as inadequate, adequate, or excessive according to the Institute of Medicine recommendations. Associations between dietary components and GWG were assessed using multivariable regression models, stratified by maternal prepregnancy BMI category.

Only 31.5% of women had adequate GWG, with 24.8% gaining insufficient weight and 43.7% gaining excessively. Women who consumed more fruits and vegetables were suggestively less likely to have excessive GWG (OR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.75, 1.00) in the minimally adjusted model, but the association became nonsignificant after adjusting for covariates (OR: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.77, 1.03). In stratified models, higher fruit and vegetable intake was linked to lower likelihood of excessive GWG among women with obesity (OR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.60, 0.97), whereas higher added sugar intake was linked to a slight reduction in likelihood of excessive GWG (OR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.84, 0.99) among women with a prepregnancy BMI in the normal range. Other dietary components were not significantly associated with GWG.

These results suggest that consuming fruits and vegetables during pregnancy may reduce risk of excessive GWG among women with obesity. With the rising prevalence of obesity among women of reproductive age, interventions to increase fruit and vegetable intake during pregnancy may have broad public health impact by improving maternal and child health outcomes.