Abstract
(1) Background: Several studies have reported associations between maternal diet in terms of single foods or nutrients and human milk compounds, while the overall role of maternal diet and related dietary patterns has rarely been investigated. (2) Methods: Between 2012 and 2014, we enrolled 300 healthy Italian mothers, who exclusively breastfed their infant. During a hospital visit at 6 weeks postpartum, a sample of freshly expressed foremilk was collected and information on maternal dietary habits in the postpartum period was obtained through an interviewer-administered food frequency questionnaire. We applied principal component factor analysis to selected nutrients in order to identify maternal dietary patterns, and assessed correlations in human milk macronutrients and fatty acids across levels of dietary patterns. (3) Results: Five dietary patterns were identified, named “Vitamins, minerals and fibre”, “Proteins and fatty acids with legs”, “Fatty acids with fins”, “Fatty acids with leaves”, “Starch and vegetable proteins”. These dietary patterns were correlated with some milk components, namely fatty acids, and in particular ω-3 and its subcomponents. (4) Conclusions: This study showed that overall maternal dietary habits during breastfeeding may influence human milk composition, suggesting the importance of adequate maternal nutrition during lactation not only for the mother herself but also to provide the infant with milk containing adequate amount and quality of nutrients for a balanced nutrition.
Highlights
Human milk provided by healthy and well-nourished mothers is the optimal way of providing nutrients as required by biological processes associated with growth and development [1]
We evaluated the relationship between maternal dietary patterns and foremilk macronutrient and fatty acids (FA) components using Pearson’s correlation coefficient
We identified five major dietary patterns among Italian breastfeeding mothers and assessed their role on human milk macronutrients and FA profile
Summary
Human milk provided by healthy and well-nourished mothers is the optimal way of providing nutrients as required by biological processes associated with growth and development [1]. It contains several bioactive compounds (e.g., nutrients, immune and stem cells, hormones, digestive enzymes, and macrophages) that contribute to the development of the gastrointestinal tract, immune system and brain of the infant [2,3,4]. A systematic review reported that most of the included studies evaluated the relationship between maternal diet and FA profile in human milk and only few studies investigated the relationship with other macroand micronutrient milk compounds [16]. Dietary patterns analysis was widely used to assess the impact of diet on several health outcomes [17,18,19]
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