She Get It From Her Momma

Diana Ross & her daughter Tracee Ellis Ross

Tracee stars as Joan Clayton on the UPN show "Girlfriends"

The University of Pittsburgh and University of California @ Santa Barbara published a study suggesting that fat stored in the hips and butt are a privileged source of nuerodevelopmental resources (1). The study asserts that upper body fat particularly abdominal fat has negative effects and lower body fat (hips, butt) have positive effects on long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) that are essential for brain development. They used waist to hip ratio(WHR) as a marker for how much fat is located around a woman’s waist compared to how much is around a her hips, thighs and butt. They used the WHR to predict cognitive ability in women and their children. They used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey which included data on body fat, body mass index (BMI), waist & hip circumference, results of cognitive tests of adults & children, demographics such as education levels, income, age, race and etc. They analyzed the data controlling for factors that correlate with higher intelligence and found that women with lower WHR and their kids have significantly higher cognitive test scores and teenage mothers with lower WHR and their kids are protected from cognitive decrements associated with teen births.

My WHR=.72

The study also postulates that this may be why men prefer women with lower WHR. They reviewed several studies that show men from various cultures in different countries prefer women with low WHR. Some men preferred smaller women, while others preferred heavier women but they still preferred lower WHR. One study found that some Ugandan male students preferred heavier women and rated women with a WHR of .5 as most attractive (2). That’s crazy because that means the woman’s hips and butt would have to be twice the size of her waist. For example a woman with a waist of 30 inches would have to have a hips and butt that was 60 inches to have a WHR of .5. That is ridiculous. Last year I gained weight and my hips/butt was up to 48 inches and that was huge. I could not imagine being any bigger than that.

Omega-3 fatty acids are the main LCPUSFA involved in brain development. Omega-3’s contain DHA and ALA and are essential fatty acids because they can not be made from the body. They have to come from food or supplements. ALA can be converted to DHA by the body. ALA mainly comes from flax seed, walnuts, olive oils etc, while DHA is primarily found in fatty fish. LCPUSFA's make up 20% of the dry weight of the human brain (3). DHA is critical for fetal and infant brain development which is one of the reasons they add it to infant formula while it is found naturally in breast milk. A recent meta-analysis report estimates that a child’s IQ increases by 0.13 point for every 100mg increase in daily maternal prenatal intake of DHA (4). A study in England showed a positive relationship between a mother’s prenatal consumption of seafood (high in DHA) and her child’s verbal IQ (5)

Tracee & Diana Ross "The Boss"
Gluteofemoral(hips/butt) fat has higher amounts of LCPUFA’s than abdominal and visceral fat.(6-8). In comparison, abdominal fat decreases the amount of a desaturase enzyme that is involved in the synthesis of important LCPUFA’s from dietary precursers(6,9). Other studies showed that 60-80% of LCPUFA’s in human breast milk come from maternal fat stores, rather than from the mother’s current dietary intake, (3,10-12) presumably because of the rapid rate of infant brain development relative to limited dietary supplies of LCPUFA’s. Each time a woman is pregnant and breastfeeds, her stores of LCPUFA’s gets depleted. This is an issue with teenage mothers who are still growing themselves because they compete with the baby for nutritional resources and limit what can be stored for future babies(1). The current study showed that women who had babies in their teens had lower cognitive scores than women having babies over the age of 19, but the women who currently had a WHR of less than .74 had cognitive scores only slightly lower than the older parity women with lower WHR. No matter what age of first birth, women with lower WHR had higher cognitive scores than those with WHR over 74 (1).

The most important points of this study is that Omega-3 fatty acids are crucial for the brain development of fetuses, infants and in adults as well and also that having excessive abdominal fat reduces the availability of those fatty acids and raise health risks in general. Low levels of Omega-3 fatty acids have been implicated in contributing to ADD, depression, anxiety disorders, aggression, hypertension and etc. So make sure that you are taking in enough omega-3’s especially if you are pregnant. Mommies, some children’s vitamins now contain DHA.

P.S. I have to say thanks to my own Mom! She loves fish and all things seafood. I always did well in school. Not to toot my own horn, but the lowest grade I made in my 6 years of undergraduate and graduate school was a C (3 total).

My mother and I!

At some point in childhood I couldn't stand fish. Now, I'll eat salmon or catfish occasionally, but I do like shellfish. I get my omega-3's by supplementing with a highly concentrated fish oil supplement. I also give it to my son who is very smart but also very hyper.

My son!

Citations for this article.