A diet rich with the nutrient choline is usually recommended during pregnancy for a healthy baby. Choline is a vital nutrient required for the proper development of brain cells. The recommended daily intake of choline is 450 milligrams. However, researchers say that taking the nutrient above the recommended levels does not benefit the baby's memory or language skills.
The findings come as a contradiction to previous studies that found high choline intake during pregnancy boosting rodents' memory skills, Reuters Health reported.
To examine whether extra choline intake during pregnancy boosts baby's memory skills, senior author of the study Dr. Steven Zeisel and colleagues included 99 pregnant women in the study. All the participants started taking six pills every day from 18 weeks of their pregnancy to three months after the baby's birth.
Of the total participants, 49 were given pills containing 833 milligrams of phosphatidylcholine, a type of choline, making their choline intake 750 mg per day. Rest of the participants were given pills containing corn oil.
When the babies reached 10 months or one year, researchers conducted some tests to measure their short and long term memory, language skills and general development. However, babies of both groups showed equal performance.
Health experts put forward some reasons to explain the inconsistency between the previous animal study and the present one. They suggested that the babies were not tracked long enough to actually find out their skill proficiencies. The experts also said that phosphatidylcholine is only a form of choline and can be less effective than choline.
"I think eating the recommended amount of choline, which is just about a half of a gram a day for pregnant women, would probably do you well," Zeisel, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told Reuters Health. "Going to high levels doesn't always give you improvement."
Egg yolk, beef liver, pork, chicken, milk, soybeans, peanuts, cauliflower, iceberg lettuce, oranges and bananas are some dietary sources rich in choline.
Results of the study have been published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
