Research over the past decade indicates that aspects of maternal nutrition may play a greater role in immediate and long-term health of offspring than was thought previously. The effects of nutritional exposures on outcomes likely depend primarily on the timing of insults during pregnancy and may not have to be severe to have a long-term impact on health. If the rate of change in knowledge of the effects of maternal nutritional exposures on outcomes continues at its current pace, work initiated in the past decade may well be looked back upon as representing the renaissance of maternal nutrition research.