The diet of a pregnant woman must include fruit
A Canadian team from the University of Alberta found that consuming enough fruit for expectant mothers is significantly more important than previously thought. According to scientists, if a pregnant woman eats a lot of fruits, the IQ of the unborn child may be higher, and memory - better.
The researchers used data collected previously from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) project, which studies the health of children in Canada. Experts studied information about 700 children. They noticed that if the mother of this or that child ate six or seven servings of fruit, already at the age of one year it was often noticeable that his memory was somewhat better than that of his peers. Subsequently, the IQ of such children turned out to be on average six to seven points higher than that of others. Scientists note that this is a very impressive result - two-thirds of the world's population have IQs ranging from 85 to 115, that is, seven points represent a quarter of the range between the lower and upper limits of the conditional "norm".
To test the findings, experts conducted a series of experiments on fruit flies, fruit flies that are often used as model organisms. Although these insects, naturally, at first glance, are infinitely far from humans, it has long been noticed that the genes responsible for brain activity in flies and humans coincide by 85 percent. Experiments have shown that fruit flies, which were born from females who ate more fruits, had better memory than others.
Experts note that many of the beneficial properties of fruits - for example, that they reduce the likelihood of cardiovascular disease - have been known for a long time. However, a new study published in the journal EbioMedicine suggests that these fruits become indispensable for humans even before birth.
Dmitry Istrov