The effects of an individual prescription diet during pregnancy in infant outcome.

The problem of this study was to identify the effects of an individual prenatal prescription for protein and kilocalorie requirements on subsequent infant outcome. This study, in part, replicated the Montreal Diet Dispensary prenatal dietary prescription program by Higgins. However, unlike the Higgins program, this project utilized a posttest-only control group design with random assignment of 29 subjects into groups. Additionally, food was not distributed in this study as in the Higgins study. Results were analyzed between a group who received diet counseling and a group who did not receive counseling and a comparison was made between a group whose prenatal diet was adequate and one whose diet was inadequate. An adequate diet was considered to be an ingestion of both protein and kilocalories at greater than or equal to 85% of the individual prescription after the 20th week of gestation. A statistically significant difference in birth weight percentile was found between the adequate and inadequate diet groups. Two infants with jaundice requiring treatment were born to mother from the inadequate diet group. Ponderal index was better for the infants in the adequate diet group compared with the inadequate diet group. The sample size was small and interfered with adequate analysis of the hypothesis. Power calculations indicated that a Type II Error may have occurred in the analysis of birth weight and ponderal index.