A potato-rich diet before pregnancy could up diabetes risk

ConclusionAlthough we cannot say from this study whether eating potatoes could cause gestational diabetes, it does seem worth taking seriously. This study has a number of strengths. It's big enough to give statistically significant results and the researchers were able to adjust their results to check for many factors which could have had an effect on women's chances of getting gestational diabetes. They carried out sensitivity analyses to check that no one factor was skewing the results. Also, as the researchers say, there is a possible plausible scientific reason for thinking that potatoes might increase the risk of diabetes. However, there are drawbacks to the study. The results are based on the women's own estimates of how often they ate potatoes, and also whether they had diabetes in pregnancy. It's possible they may have forgotten or misreported this. We also don't know how bad the women’s diabetes was, so we can't tell whether eating more potatoes affects the severity of diabetes in pregnancy. Also, most of the women in the study were white Americans, so we can't be sure the results would apply to everyone. This is particularly important, as it is known that the risks of gestational diabetes are higher in some ethnic groups, such as black women or women of South Asian origin. Finally, even the best observational study cannot have adjusted for all possible factors affecting the outcome. That's why we can't say that potatoes are the cause of the increased risk of ges...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Food/diet Diabetes Pregnancy/child Source Type: news