Some studies have shown that if pregnant women eat more fish, their babies may end up with slightly higher IQs at the age of 7 than the babies of moms who don’t eat as much fish during pregnancy.
And in our rush (I was going to say “in our arrogance” but that was simply too arrogant on my part) to believe that we understand stuff long before we actually know what we’re talking about, a lot of experts have recommended that pregnant women and prospective moms increase their intake of fish in order to get higher levels of fish oil products in their blood streams.
Well, there are certainly lots of good reasons to eat more (safe) fish, especially by moms, but making your baby smarter as a result is not one of them.
Not, that is, if you believe – and I do – a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which enrolled 2000 pregnant women, half of whom got fish oil supplements and half of whom got a placebo of vegetable oil.
When the babies were evaluated at12 months they found no cognitive score differences in the babies when they were evaluated at 18 months, Why? 3 potential reasons.
- Fish oils supplements don’t actually improve cognitive scores
- The women in this study were already getting enough fish oil in their regular diet so taking supplements would not have shown any benefit
- Maybe vegetable oil supplements – the placebo – increases cognitive scores as much as fish oil so the researchers were not able to detect a measurable difference.
Whatever. Bottom line: fish is good for you and supplements are, well, no one knows really. So eat lots of (safe) fish.
