This relationship between fetal nutritional events and lifelong risks of metabolic and cardiovascular disease was first described by the epidemiologist David Barker of Southampton Hospital in England, and now goes by the name Fetal Origins of Adult Disease (FOAD). And we’re not done with this yet. Starvation is clearly a stressor, raising the question of whether the metabolic programming occurs because of the nutritional consequences of the shortage of calories, and /or because of the stressfulness of the shortage of calories. Asked another way, do non-nutritional stressors during pregnancy
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