DASH diet during pregnancy helps prevent LGA newborns

Pregnant women with high adherence to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet have a much lower chance of having large-for-gestational-age (LGA) newborns, reports a Brazil study.

“This should be considered in the planning of maternal-infant health promotion actions and may lead to an improvement in nutritional care during prenatal care,” said the researchers, who performed a secondary analysis of a prospective cohort of 601 mother and child pairs who attended primary healthcare in a Brazilian municipality.

A food frequency questionnaire and 24-h recall were used to estimate dietary intake. Data on gestational duration, birth weight, and newborn sex were collected from the Live Birth Information System. Finally, logistic regression models, adjusted for confounding factors, were used to explore the association between adherence to DASH diet and birth weight categories.

Of the newborns, 10.3 percent were classified as small for gestational age (SGA) and 13.3 percent as LGA. [Eur J Clin Nutr 2025;79:460-466]

Adherence to the healthy components of the DASH diet was low among Brazilian pregnant women. However, those in the third tertile of the DASH diet score were less likely to deliver LGA infants (odds ratio [OR], 0.51, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.28‒0.94; p=0.03). No association was found between adherence to DASH diet and SGA newborns (OR, 0.87, 95 percent CI, 0.42‒1.84; p=0.65).

“[P]rospective and longitudinal studies are needed to confirm the causal relationship between adherence to the DASH diet during pregnancy and the birth weight of newborns,” the researchers said.

Beans and nuts

Among the food groups comprising the DASH diet, nuts and legumes consumption significantly differed with regards to birth weight categories according to gestational age. Pregnant women with LGA newborns reported a lower consumption of this food group relative to other birth weight categories.

“It should be noted that due to the social, economic, and cultural characteristics of the study population, the consumption of nuts and oilseeds was much lower than that observed in previous international studies,” the researchers said.

“In the present study population, the score of this component was due to the consumption of beans because it is a food typically included in the Brazilian dietary pattern,” they added.

Additionally, a previous study showed that the consumption of legumes, especially beans, helps reduce cholesterol and improve glycaemic control, influencing maternal metabolism and favouring the birth of newborns with adequate weight. Beans contain soluble dietary fibres, vegetable protein, isoflavones, oligosaccharides, phospholipids, and fatty acids. [Nutrition 2013;29:619-624]

The authors of the said study found that adherence to the recommended intake of n-3 and n-6 fatty acids during pregnancy results in a lower risk of LGA births. Such finding suggests that the “presence of these fatty acids may help explain the protective mechanism associated with increased consumption of this food group.”

DASH diet is characterized by high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products, along with low consumption of processed red meats, sodium, and sugary beverages. [Ann Epidemiol 1995;5:108-118; JAMA 2017;317:1529]