Nuts help brains of unborn children

Children’s brains can be boosted by their mother eating nuts during early pregnancy, a new study has claimed.

Attention span, working memory and cognitive function were found to be higher in children whose mothers ate more nuts during the first trimester of pregnancy, researchers found.

Analysis was carried out on more than 2,200 pregnant mothers and their children in Spain, finding links between a maternal diet rich in nuts and improved neuro-development in the child. The children’s neuropsychological development was assessed at 18 months, five years and eight years after birth.

Florence Gignac, researcher and author of the study by the Barcelona Institute of Global Health,said:“thebrainundergoes a series of complex processes during gestation and this means that maternal nutrition is a determining factor in foetal brain development and can have long-term effects.”

She added: “We think that the beneficial effects observed might be due to the fact that the nuts provided high levels of folic acid and, in particular, essential fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6.”