Maternal Nutrition and the Baby: Fix Deficiencies and Diet Quality, Not the Macro Ratio

Summary

A mother's diet genuinely shapes her child's growth and cognition — but the lever is **correcting deficiencies and raising overall diet quality** (B12/animal-source foods, choline, protein-energy in the undernourished, iodine, iron), **not** pushing a high-protein/low-carb ratio: more protein above adequacy can *raise* the risk of a small baby, and DHA/iron/mild-iodine supplements have mostly *failed* in trials of already-nourished women. The villain is the refined-carb-dominant, micronutrient-poor pattern, not carbohydrate itself.