You may want to see the article, "What You Eat Affects You, Your Kids and Your Grandkids." Parents, nutritionists, and consumers are wondering why the culture of food is changing so rapidly that's the change is now more than once a generation. It also has been said that the search for healthy food now has a new name, and instead of research in science, it's also now an ideology called 'nutritionism'.
Find out how how and what your great grandparents ate differs from what your grandparents, parents, self, and children are eating today. Did they grow their own organic farm vegetables using folkloric ways (spices and herbs or soap bubbles) to chase away the bugs on vegetables and fruit rather than commercial pesticides?
Some cooks of the 1900s who baked with bacon grease or clarified chicken fat and butter died in their forties of clogged arteries, but others have the genes to survive long-chain saturated fats
On the other hand, if many close relatives ate these foods and lived to 100, obviously their genes had enough cholesterol receptors on the liver to remove the clog or the genes programmed the relatives for very large LDL particles that didn't clog the arteries with plaque regardless of what was eaten. Six percent of the population can eat almost any edible diet and still be healthy on the inside. But the majority can't.
You may be interested in checking out Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto or the book, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss (2013).
Obese mothers may pass health risks on to grandchildren
Health problems linked to obesity -- like heart disease and diabetes -- could skip an entire generation, a new study suggests. Grandparents can pass the predisposition to develop chronic degenerative diseases and obesity to their grandchildren, but skip their children's generation.
Researchers have found that the offspring of obese mothers may be spared health problems linked to obesity, while their own children then inherit them. You can check out the original research or it's abstract in this month's issue of the journal Endocrinology. Tommy's, a baby charity that funds research into pregnancy health, the British Heart Foundation, and the Medical Research Council funded the research.
Obesity is not about what kids are fed today. It's about what your grandparents ate
Currently, concern about the obesity epidemic is mainly focused on the health of obese women and their children, rather than the wider family. The University of Edinburgh study has shown that moderately obese mothers can make an impact on the birth weight and diabetes risk of grandchildren, in the apparent absence of effects in their own children.
Experts say that rates of obesity are at an all-time high. Among the associated health problems are breast and colon cancer and stroke. Moderate obesity is a Body Mass Index (BMI) between 30 and 34.9. It's not only about you are what your grandparents ate, but also about their genes for developing health problems from diet and the predisposition for developing those diseases from inherited genes.
The study, carried out in mice, could help inform health policy on obesity
Scientists studied moderately obese female mice fed on a diet high in fat and sugar before and during pregnancy. The mice were found to pass on the risks of obesity to the second generation of offspring, while virtually no ill effects were seen in the first generation.
Reasons why the first generation is apparently protected are not fully understood. Researchers suggest that reasons could include differences in maternal weight gain during pregnancy or specific food eaten during pregnancy.
They add that studying effects of this kind – referred to as developmental programming – in humans, could be challenging but possible. Dr Amanda Drake, Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, explained in the June 5, 2013 news release, Obese mums may pass health risks on to grandchildren. "Given the worldwide increase in obesity, it is vital that we gain an understanding of how future generations may be affected. Future studies could look at these trends in humans but they would need to take into account genetics, environmental, social and cultural factors.
You are what your grandmother ate due to epigenetic changes to DNA
You also may want to check out the article, "You are what your grandmother ate." One European study used historical data of harvests in Sweden, and found that a youngster had a quadrupled risk of diabetes if their grandfather had good access to food during his own boyhood. See Grandad's diet affects descendants' health).
Another study with mice suggests support for the idea that we inherit not only our genes from our parents, but also a set of instructions that tell the genes when to become active. These instructions appear to be passed on through "epigenetic" changes to DNA - genes can be activated or silenced according to the chemical groups that are added onto them, explains the November 13, 2006 article in the health section of the online magazine New Scientist, "You are what your grandmother ate."
