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" Women who eat a diet including traditional foods are at less risk of giving birth prematurely, - between 22 and 37 weeks - a new study has found. Previous investigations have found that a pregnant woman&amp;#039;s diet can affect a baby&amp;#039;s health, so a team of researchers from Sweden, Norway and Iceland set out to discover how eating traditional foods - such as fish, boiled potatoes, gravy and cooked vegetables - influenced how early a woman gave birth. Doctors looked at data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, which includes details of 66,000 births from between 2002 and 2008. All of the participants had given birth at least once, did not have diabetes and filled out a detailed questionnaire concerning their eating habits during the first half of their pregnancy. It was found that women tended to follow one of three patterns with regard to diet.\u00A0 A &amp;#039;prudent&amp;#039; diet contained lots of fruit, vegetables, whole grain cereals and poultry, while a &amp;#039;western&amp;#039; diet involved foods high in salt and sugar as well as processed meat and desserts. The third eating plan expectant mothers followed was the &amp;#039;traditional&amp;#039; one, including plenty of fish, potatoes and vegetables. Of the women surveyed, 3,505 gave birth prematurely, but the risk of this appeared to be reduced if they followed the &amp;#039;prudent&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;traditional&amp;#039; diets. While the &amp;#039;western&amp;#039; diet is the most unhealthy, results showed that this did not necessarily affect when babies were born. This suggests that high-fat foods do not need to be completely cut from a pregnancy diet, but decreasing the intake of them is still recommended. To ensure accurate results, doctors also looked at factors including the age of the mother, whether or not they had delivered a premature baby previously and at the education the pregnant women had received. Doctors working on the paper concluded: &amp;quot;Diet matters for the risk of preterm delivery, which may reassure medical practitioners that the current dietary recommendations are sound, but also inspire them to pay more attention to dietary counselling.&amp;quot; Professor Lucilla Poston of King&amp;#039;s College London emphasised that healthy eating during pregnancy has always been a sensible idea, but said doctors need to make sure they get the message across to expectant mothers. Read the full paper "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/news/a25024/traditional-diet-may-prevent-premature-birth/>