They're Lying About 'Healthy' Foods & Sugar! Shocking New Research That's Harming You

Steven Bartlett interviews Jessie Inchauspé about her new book on pregnancy nutrition. She argues that a baby is not 'set in stone' at conception, and that what a mother eats programs the baby's DNA via epigenetic switches affecting lifelong disease risk. She covers four key nutrients most mothers lack or overconsume: choline, omega-3s, protein and sugar. The conversation spans glucose spikes, cravings, breastfeeding, alcohol, caffeine, exercise, and supplements, plus Jessie's personal experience of a silent miscarriage and an anxious second pregnancy.

• Claims there is a 'canyon' between what science knows about pregnancy nutrition and what mothers are actually told.
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• Argues the 'bun in the oven' metaphor is a lie because a baby is co-created during pregnancy, not set at conception.
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• States 90% of mothers do not get enough choline during pregnancy and only 6% of doctors mention it.
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• Cites the 1940-1953 UK sugar ration as a natural experiment: babies in the womb during it had 15% lower lifetime type 2 diabetes risk.
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• Reveals she was on the cusp of prediabetes at 25 and suspects roots in her mother's high-sugar pregnancy diet.
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• Shares she had a silent miscarriage in 2024, finding out at the 3-month scan that the embryo had stopped developing a month earlier.
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• Says if she could change one thing, she'd outlaw food marketing and health claims like 'no added sugars'.
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• Compares a baby to a seed and the mother's body to soil that co-creates how the baby 'grows'.
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• A study using voodoo dolls found spouses with the most glucose lows stuck the most pins in dolls of their partners.
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• A glass of orange juice and a can of Coke contain about the same 25g of sugar, the WHO daily maximum.
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• Four eggs a day (about $7 for 28 eggs) supplies the ~450mg of choline a baby needs to build its brain.
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• In a Cornell study, babies of high-choline mothers had 10% faster reaction times, a marker correlated with adult IQ.
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• You form your roughly 100 billion neurons in the womb and never replace them; they're made at 250,000 per minute.
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• Calf raises engage the soleus muscle, which soaks up glucose and reduces a spike after eating something sweet.
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• Alcohol crosses freely to the baby, so a glass of wine while pregnant means the baby is effectively drinking too.
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• One in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, usually in the first trimester.
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• Stanford research shows just 5 hours of sleep raises hunger hormone ghrelin by ~15% and lowers satiety hormone leptin by ~15%.
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• An avocado and a donut can both be 200 calories yet have vastly different effects, so calories are a poor measure of food.
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