Pre-pregnancy potato consumption may boost diabetes risk

The women who developed the disease consumed more potatoes before they became pregnant, however, the study claims the severity of their diabetes was not recorded.

When a woman undergoes gestational diabetes, the blood sugar levels may increase drastically and this may further cause certain other issues both for the baby and the mother. Gestational diabetes is a condition where women first develop diabetes during pregnancy.

To see if there was a link, researchers led by Cuilin Zhang at the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, Maryland used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, which has monitored more than 115,000 women since 1989.

Researchers from the British Health Institute wanted to find out if potatoes are indeed responsible for gestational diabetes.

“The evidence tells us that we need to eat more starchy foods, such as potatoes, bread, pasta and rice, as well as fruit and vegetables to increase fibre consumption and protect bowel health”. They said that one serving includes one baked or boiled potato, 237ml of mashed potatoes or 113g of fries.

A new study has found that consumption of potatoes by women during pregnancy could increase the risk of developing gestational diabetes.

The researchers found that women who ate more potatoes had a higher risk of gestational diabetes. According to the report, the risk reduced by 9 to 12 percent in women who substituted two servings of potatoes per week with legumes or whole grains foods.

Potatoes and gestational diabetes are linked.

Worth of mentioning is the fact that none of the women who chose to participate in the study didn’t experience any of the signs of gestational diabetes.

They found that even one serving a week increased the risk by 20 per cent compared to women eating less than one serving a week, as body mass index was taken into account. Approximately half of women who develop this condition eventually develop Type 2 diabetes in the immediate aftermath (months to years) after they give birth.

“Our findings are biologically plausible, though the detailed underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated”, explained the researchers as stated in an article that appeared on MedPage Today.

The study is based on more than 21.000pregnancies, among which 854 included cases of gestational diabetes.

The authors cautioned, however, that because their study was not created to prove cause and effect, their results do not prove conclusively that potato consumption directly leads to gestational diabetes.