Dietary patterns by cluster analysis in pregnant women: relationship with nutrient intakes and dietary patterns in 7‐year‐old offspring

Abstract

Little is known about how dietary patterns of mothers and their children track over time. The objectives of this study are to obtain dietary patterns in pregnancy using cluster analysis, to examine women's mean nutrient intakes in each cluster and to compare the dietary patterns of mothers to those of their children. Pregnant women (n = 12 195) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children reported their frequency of consumption of 47 foods and food groups. These data were used to obtain dietary patterns during pregnancy by cluster analysis. The absolute and energy‐adjusted nutrient intakes were compared between clusters. Women's dietary patterns were compared with previously derived clusters of their children at 7 years of age. Multinomial logistic regression was performed to evaluate relationships comparing maternal and offspring clusters. Three maternal clusters were identified: ‘fruit and vegetables’, ‘meat and potatoes’ and ‘white bread and coffee’. After energy adjustment women in the ‘fruit and vegetables’ cluster had the highest mean nutrient intakes. Mothers in the ‘fruit and vegetables’ cluster were more likely than mothers in ‘meat and potatoes’ (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 2.00; 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 1.69–2.36) or ‘white bread and coffee’ (OR: 2.18; 95% CI: 1.87–2.53) clusters to have children in a ‘plant‐based’ cluster. However the majority of children were in clusters unrelated to their mother dietary pattern. Three distinct dietary patterns were obtained in pregnancy; the ‘fruit and vegetables’ pattern being the most nutrient dense. Mothers' dietary patterns were associated with but did not dominate offspring dietary patterns.

Maternal dietary patterns during pregnancy and intelligence quotients in the offspring at 8 years of age: Findings from the ALSPAC cohort

“…These results suggest that consuming a nutrient dense diet during pregnancy is important for an offspring's neurological development. This is supported by our previous study (Vilela et al, 2016), which found that women in the fruit and vegetables cluster had a diet that was more nutrient dense than that of women in the other two clusters.…”

“…It is likely that mothers' diet will influence the diet of their children once they are born. In our previous study, we found this to be the case (Vilela et al, 2016); in particular, children of mothers in the fruit and vegetables cluster were more likely than those of mothers in the other two clusters to have their diets classified in a "plant-based" cluster, which was characterised by very similar foods (Smith et al, 2011).…”

“…Three maternal dietary patterns during pregnancy were obtained by k-means clustering. The complete cluster derivation methods were described in a previous publication by Vilela et al (2016). The k-means method derives clusters based upon the mean intakes of the input variables, using the squared Euclidian distances between observations to determine cluster position (Newby & Tucker, 2004).…”

“…Despite its ability to add insight into the relationship between diet and pregnancy outcomes, there are currently very few studies, which have used cluster analysis to derive dietary patterns during pregnancy (Vilela et al, 2016). Therefore, this study will use it to obtain dietary patterns in pregnancy in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which has not been done before (Emmett, Jones, & Northstone, 2015).…”

Evaluation of questionnaire as an instrument to measure the level of nutritional and weight gain knowledge in pregnant women in Poland. A pilot study

“…The first domain of this questionnaire, weight gain knowledge, has also been assessed separately in other studies. Most studies contains at least the evaluation whether women follow the guidelines to proper weight gain according to their respective weight and height [47][48][49]. In addition, our questionnaire contains items asking pregnant women whether they know that little or excessive weight gain has an impact on maternal and child's health.…”