Even moderate consumption of fried foods before pregnancy can significantly increase the risk of gestational diabetes, a large retrospective study has determined.
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The potential detrimental effects may result from the modification of foods and frying medium, and generation of harmful by-products during the frying process.
Depending on how often fried foods were consumed each week, the risk increased anywhere from 13% to more than double, compared with those who abstained from fried foods. The risks were relatively stable when body weight was controlled for, and higher for foods eaten away from home than in-home. These findings seem to support the authors’ conjecture that chemical changes, rather than calories, may be the root problem.
“The potential detrimental effects may result from the modification of foods and frying medium, and generation of harmful by-products during the frying process,” especially because frying oils in restaurants are generally reused, increasing degradation, Dr. Wei Bao, of the National Institutes of Health, and his associates wrote in the Oct. 8 issue of Diabetologia (2014 [doi: 10.1007/s00125-014-3382-x]). “Frying deteriorates oils through the processes of oxidation and hydrogenation, leading to an increase in the absorption of oil degradation products by the foods being fried, and also a loss of unsaturated fatty acids ... and an increase in the corresponding trans-fatty acids.”
Frying also results in the production of advanced glycation end products, which, because they increase oxidative stress and inflammation, have been implicated in insulin resistance, beta-cell damage, and diabetes.
The team used data from the Nurses’ Health Study to examine the relationship between consuming fried foods and the development of gestational diabetes. The cohort included 21,079 singleton pregnancies. Among these, there were 847 (4%) incident cases of gestational diabetes. The analysis compared fried foods consumed 1-3, 4-6, and 7 or more times per week, to consumption less than once per week.
The relative risks were significantly increased for each of these consumption patterns (1.13, 1.31, and 2.18, respectively). The significant association was somewhat attenuated, but remained significant, after adjustment for body mass index.
However, the results were altered when the authors broke their general analysis down into consumption of fried foods up to four times weekly, either away from or at home. Only consumption away from home remained significantly associated with gestational diabetes (relative risk, 1.63)
The National Institutes of Health funded the study. The authors had no financial disclosures.
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