You are what you eat. We all know this phrase, but the truth is, what we eat doesn’t just impact us, it affects our children too. Maternal diet doesn’t simply start and end with pregnancy. Its importance stretches from before preconception right the way through to ante-natal and beyond into later life. 

In this inaugural episode with Dr Karen Morton we explore at what stage women should consider their lifestyle and diet when trying to conceive. 

“It's for your whole life, from before you were even conceived right the way through to your dying day. The concept of we are what we eat is undoubtedly true, but we are also what our mothers ate. And that's really the whole concept of optimising the intrauterine environment, before, during, and then forever after.”

But one of the biggest things influencing all of our diets is sugar. We don’t eat well on the sugar front. In fact, there are over 1 million people living in the UK with undiagnosed type-2 diabetes right now. And some of these people are women of reproductive age who may not have actual type-2 diabetes just yet, but they’re on the path to developing it. 

“The really interesting thing about carbohydrate intake is that it's not the absolute amounts that you eat, but it's the combinations of food that are so interesting.”

So before you even start trying to get pregnant, look at your nutrition. 

This episode provides a really good introduction for how beneficial a healthy well balanced diet is at all stages of life, but particularly before and during pregnancy.

On today’s podcast:

• Maternal diet and the epigenetic effect of that
• Common nutritional deficiencies women should be aware of
• The influence of natural disasters on the genetics of unborn babies
• How to deal with morning sickness
• The risk factors for developing gestational diabetes
• Why you should exercise after eating