Reliability of the BEliefs in Breastfeeding Empowerment Scale in Measuring Breastfeeding Perceptions

kcal) or a high-fat, high-sucrose diet (HFHSD, 53.7 fat kcal and 42.48 carbohydrates kcal) for 6 weeks to induce obesity.Mice were then assigned to one of four dietary treatment groups (n10/ group): CON, CON + 10% (wt/wt) PB, HFHSD, or HFHSD + 10% PB for 6 weeks prior to mating with lean males and continued through pregnancy.Food intakes were recorded daily and body weight (bw) measured weekly.At days post coitum 17.5, dams were fasted for 4h and anesthetized with a ketamine/xylazine cocktail (100 mg/10 mg/kg bw).Before euthanasia, body composition was assessed using a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry and tissues were collected and weighed.Fetal and placental outcomes including the number of pups per litter, and group average fetal, placental and conceptus weight were recorded.Fasting serum lipids and glucose were also assessed after euthanization.Data were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA with HFHSD and PB as factors, followed by post hoc tests with p< 0.05.Results: As expected, HFHSD significantly increased body weight (P< 0.05) and visceral fat (P< 0.005) compared to CON, but PB supplementation had no significant effect on these parameters.HFHSD diet increased serum total cholesterol compared to CON (41.0 AE 16.1 mg/dL in CON vs. 53.6AE 15.8 mg/dL in HFHSD, P0.035), and PB supplementation with HFHSD diet significantly lowered it (52.4AE 17.0 mg/dL in HFHSD vs. 42.2AE 15.0 mg/dL in HFHSD+PB, P0.015).Serum triglycerides were lowest in the HFHSD+PB group, although differences were not statistically significant.Fasting glucose levels were unaffected by dietary treatments.HFHSD significantly increased conceptus weight compared to CON (9.566 AE 2.454 g in CON vs. 7.571 AE 1.978 g in HFHSD, P0.024), but fetal weight was significantly higher in the HFHSD+PB group compared to HFHSD (0.744 AE 0.275 g vs 0.606 AE 0.171 g, P0.035).Additionally, HFHSD+PB tended to have the lowest placental weight (P0.058).Conclusions: PB may mitigate the impact of maternal obesity and improve metabolic health of the dam but seem to have modest effects on fetal outcomes.