A Healthier Start Begins with Personalized Nutrition During Pregnancy
2025-07-11
Pregnancy is one of life’s most exciting chapters, but it also brings real health challenges. When nutrition during pregnancy is overlooked, it can affect the well-being of both the mother and the baby.
Personalized nutrition, guided by genetic insights, reduces risks, improves outcomes, and supports lifelong health by tailoring food and supplement choices to each mother’s body.
On July 11, World Population Day announces its theme “Empowering young people to create the families they want in a fair and hopeful world”. It reminds us that every person deserves the right to make informed choices about their future.
That includes access to reliable health tools like genetic screening and personalized healthcare, especially for young couples preparing to welcome a baby. It’s not just about getting pregnant. It’s about ensuring the best possible start for mother and child.
Nutrition Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
The nutritional needs during pregnancy are far from one-size-fits-all. While general advice like “eat healthy” is well-meaning, the stakes are much higher: poor dietary decisions can lead to maternal complications like gestational diabetes or preeclampsia, prolonged recovery after childbirth, and developmental issues for the baby.
Modern science now offers a powerful ally which is personalized nutrition, guided by genomics technologies. Genetic screening during the reproductive stage is no longer just about identifying risks. It also provides insight into how a mother’s body responds to certain nutrients, helping guide more precise and effective dietary choices.
This genetic insight enables doctors and parents to move from generic recommendations to a tailored nutritional plan based on individual metabolic and genetic profiles. For example, some women may have genetic predispositions that affect how their bodies absorb iron or metabolize folate, two critical nutrients during pregnancy. Knowing this in advance can help optimize supplementation, reduce risks, and improve recovery after delivery.
Preventing Disease Before It Starts
Maternal nutrition also shapes fetal growth and development at the molecular level, influencing long-term health outcomes for the child. A growing body of research supports the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) theory, which shows that conditions like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases may trace back to in-utero nutritional environments.
A study published in Nature confirmed for the first time that maternal obesity can independently induce non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in adult offspring. Researchers found that obesity during pregnancy causes lasting changes in fetal liver immune cells, which persist into adulthood. These changes are not just metabolic—they involve epigenetic reprogramming, affecting gene expression in ways that increase vulnerability to chronic disease.
In this context, personalized nutrition becomes not just a lifestyle choice but a form of preventive medicine. By adapting a mother’s diet based on genetic insights and real-time biomarkers, it is possible to lower the child’s future risk of developing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes or metabolic syndrome.
Personalized nutrition offers a new way to fight back. It combines insights from genetics, gut health, and lifestyle to create a customized plan for each woman. This approach is already used in research and early care programs in many parts of the world. It’s not just about adding supplements. It’s about the right nutrients for the right person at the right time.
Healthier Future starts Early
It is now possible to apply a multi-omics approach to understand how each mother-baby pair might uniquely respond to certain dietary patterns. The advancements in genetic screening, which include analyzing interactions between genes, gut microbiota, metabolites, and nutrients, further support the research on such dietary needs.
Certain health tools can be tailored to specific populations. For example, a study published by the International Journal of Population Data Science highlights a global rise in overweight and obesity among pregnant women, with particularly high rates in high-income regions such as North America, Australia/Oceania, and Europe. In Asia, while maternal obesity is on the rise, it remains significantly lower than in North America.
Globally, one in six pregnancies is now affected by obesity. In North America, that figure has increased to one in four since 2020. Demographic differences remain evident under such trends. Genetic insights offer a way to localize Western clinical guidelines, ensuring they reflect cultural and biological variations across different populations.
Applying these tools early allows couples to make more informed reproductive decisions, reduce birth defects, and plan for personalized prenatal care from day one. Reproductive genetic screening is no longer simply about detecting disease. It’s about guiding the entire pregnancy journey with precision and empathy.
Genetic insights with practical care offer support to build a healthier future. Let’s rethink what it means to support the new generation on this World Population Day. Healthy pregnancies lead to healthy families. And it all starts with understanding what each body’s need.
About BGI Genomics
BGI Genomics, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, is the world's leading integrated solutions provider of precision medicine. Our services cover more than 100 countries and regions, involving more than 2,300 medical institutions. In July 2017, as a subsidiary of BGI Group, BGI Genomics (300676.SZ) was officially listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
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