Which Is Worse, Eating Junk Food During Early or Late Pregnancy?

Does it matter if a mother eats junk food during pregnancy?  A recent study claims that eating junk food has different effects on the developing fetus depending on which stage of pregnancy an expectant mother eats junk food.

According to Dr. Jessica Gugusheff, post-doctoral researcher in the School of Agriculture, Food, and Wine at the University of Adelaide, “Our research suggests that too much junk food consumed late in pregnancy for humans has the potential to be more harmful to the child than excess junk food early in the pregnancy… Importantly, it also indicates that if excess junk food was consumed by the mother in those early stages of pregnancy, there may be a chance to reduce those negative effects on the baby by eating a healthy diet in late pregnancy.  The second critical window is adolescence and we’ve found differences between males and females. Our experiments showed that eating a healthy diet during adolescence could reverse the junk food preference in males but not females.”

Dr. Gugusheff also mentioned that the brain grows the fastest during these critical windows, which is probably why it is so susceptible to the effects of junk food at these times.