Seafood consumption during pregnancy may improve attention capacity in children

A team of scientists from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by ”la Caixa”, has studied the relationship between the consumption of various types of seafood during pregnancy and attention capacity in children at eight years of age.

The results, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, show that eating a seafood-rich diet during early pregnancy is associated with better attention outcomes in children.

The study included 1,641 mother-child pairs from the INMA Environment and Childhood Project, a Spanish cohort study on the role of pollutants during pregnancy and their effects on children. Over the course of their pregnancies, the mothers completed numerous food-frequency questionnaires that assessed how often they ate more than a hundred different food items, including various types of seafood.