NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women who eat nuts are more likely to have smart babies, a new study shows.
Researchers at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health found that attention span, working memory, and cognitive function were higher in children whose nieces ate nuts during the first 3 months of pregnancy.
In the study, the team looked at diets for 2,200 pregnant women, as well as brain development for their children at the age of 18 months, 5 years and 8 years.
"This is the first study to explore the potential benefits of eating nuts during pregnancy for the long-term development of the nervous child," said study author Florence Guinac.
"The brain undergoes a series of complex processes during pregnancy, which means that nutrition from the mother is a crucial factor in fetal brain development and can have long-term effects.
"The nuts we took into account in this study were walnuts, almonds, peanuts, pine nuts and nuts that provided high levels of folic acid, in particular, essential fatty acids such as omega-3 and omega-6."
These components tend to accumulate in nerve tissue, especially in the front regions of the brain, which affect memory and executive functions. "