A study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and it suggested that a poor diet in pregnancy could lead to switching off a particular gene in the offspring. There have been lots of speculations regarding the reasons behind a poor diet during pregnancy causing the development of diabetes in the offspring in later life but this study comes with an explanation for the same.

Hnf4a is the name of that gene and it plays an important role in the development of pancreas and insulin. It was impossible for researchers to conduct this study on pregnant women, so they chose to feed a protein deficient diet to pregnant rats. After certain time, they found that it resulted into offspring with type 2 diabetes.

At later stages, they also observed that particular type of gene going silent in the child’s body which could further lead to diabetes. Dr. Susan Ozanne of the University of Cambridge, who led the study, stated that the team of researchers needed to do some advanced research on this so that they could find out whether high-fat diets or other imbalanced diets had similar consequences.

In addition, she said, "Having a healthy well-balanced diet any time in your life is important for your health, but a healthy well-balanced diet during pregnancy is particularly important because of the impact on the baby long-term and potentially even on the grandchildren as well”.