Healthy dietary patterns, such as the alternate Mediterranean diet and alternate Healthy Eating Index, benefit cardiometabolic health. However, several food components of these dietary patterns are primary sources of environmental chemicals. Here, using data from a racially and ethnically diverse US cohort, we show that healthy dietary pattern scores were positively associated with plasma chemical exposure in pregnancy, particularly for the alternate Mediterranean diet and alternate Healthy Eating Index with polychlorinated biphenyls and per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances. The associations appeared stronger among Asian and Pacific Islanders. These findings suggest that optimizing the benefits of a healthy diet requires concerted regulatory efforts aimed at lowering environmental chemical exposure.

Energy balance-related behaviors (EBRBs), i.e., diet, sedentary behavior, physical activity, and sleep, combine into lifestyle patterns, which we aim to identify in French preschoolers and analyze their family correlates within the framework of a comprehensive socioecological model. Parental questionnaires provided information about family characteristics and children’s EBRBs for 978 5-year-olds of the EDEN cohort. We used principal component analysis to derive lifestyle patterns from EBRBs and hierarchical multivariable linear regressions to assess their associations with family socio-demographics, parent health/behaviors, and parent-child interactions. Analyses were stratified by sex. Of the three lifestyle patterns identified (unhealthy, healthy, and mixed), the mixed pattern differed the most between sexes. Lower parental education, suboptimal maternal diet, TV during meals, and later bedtime were associated with higher adherence to unhealthy patterns. Children cognitively stimulated at home and boys of mothers not employed adhered more to the healthy pattern. Older siblings (for girls) and higher engagement of parents in leisure-time physical activity (for boys) were related to greater adherence to mixed patterns. The identification of various correlates from multiple socioecological levels suggests that tackling the potentially synergistic effect of lifestyle patterns on health requires addressing processes relevant to the parent-child dimension and structural barriers parents may encounter.

Previous findings suggest that parental feeding practices may adapt to children’s eating behavior and sex, but few studies assessed these associations in toddlerhood. We aimed to study the associations between infant’s appetite or children’s genetic susceptibility to obesity and parental feeding practices. We assessed infant’s appetite (three-category indicator: low, normal or high appetite, labelled 4-to-24-month appetite) and calculated a combined obesity risk-allele score (genetic risk score of body mass index (BMI-GRS)) in a longitudinal study of respectively 1358 and 932 children from the EDEN cohort. Parental feeding practices were assessed at 2-year-follow-up by the CFPQ. Three of the five tested scores were used as continuous variables; others were considered as binary variables, according to the median. Associations between infant’s appetite or child’s BMI-GRS and parental feeding practices were assessed by linear and logistic regression models, stratified on child’s sex if interactions were significant. 4-to-24-month appetite was positively associated with restrictive feeding practices among boys and girls. Among boys, high compared to normal 4-to-24-month appetite was associated with higher use of food to regulate child’s emotions (OR [95% CI] = 2.24 [1.36; 3.68]). Child’s BMI-GRS was not related to parental feeding practices. Parental feeding practices may adapt to parental perception of infant’s appetite and child’s sex.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate associations of plasma glycated albumin (GA) concentrations in early and midpregnancy with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) risk. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We measured GA concentrations using blood samples collected at 10–14 and 15–26 weeks’ gestation in 107 GDM case and 214 control participants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Fetal Growth Study. We performed generalized linear mixed-effect regression to test the mean GA difference between GDM case and control participants and conditional logistic regression to assess prospective associations between GA concentrations and GDM risk. RESULTS: At 15–26 weeks’ gestation mean GA was lower in GDM case participants than in control participants (mean 11.90% [95% CI 6.42–32.76] vs. 12.46% [8.45–38.35], adjusted P value for difference = 0.004). Consistently, women with higher GA concentrations tended to have a lower GDM risk, although the associations were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that GA concentrations in midpregnancy might be lower in women who later develop GDM. Further studies are needed to identify the mechanism.