Science is telling us that the adage "You are what you eat" is truer than we ever thought:
Recently a study showed that what mothers eat during pregnancy shows up in the amniotic fluid around the growing baby, giving the baby a taste of what the mother eats - and forms later preferences for food that it already "knows."
We know already that mothers who are obese will have overweight children; that might be genetics, or as we are finding out more and more, epigenetics. One study from the Netherlands showed that women who were going hungry during the poor years during and after World War II had overweight children later down the line. - Apparently under- and overfeeding the mother is changing something metabolically in the unborn baby.
And now the newest insight comes from studies on male sperm: How the man is fed during building of his sperms also influences the weight and health of his future off-spring.
It seems that, when we are eating, we are responsible not only for our own health, but also for the health of our unborn children. Amazing, isn't it?
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You Are What You Eat
August 20, 2011
Tags:
World War IIfood, amniotic fluid, baby, epigenetics, father, Genetics, hunger, Metabolism, mother, Netherlands, obesity, overfeeding, overweight, Pregnancy, sperm, taste, underfeeding, World War II, You Are What You Eat
2 Comments
Comments
Aug 27, 2011 8:55 PM EDT
What amazes me is how that stops when it comes to people, especially children, on feeding tubes. While I fully understand that there ARE reasons for sticking solely to enteral formula (ie, inability to digest proteins, family stress, family inability to take on task of a balanced diet and basic food safety), there are many reasons for why a diet of real food should be offered as an option, no? I ran a quick calculation the other day: A child on a typical amount of 1000mL of enteral formula a day will be sustained in one month *solely* by: 16 cups of corn syrup, 7 cups of safflower and MCT oils, 6 cups of isolated protein (whey), and a host of vitamins and minerals. And that's it. So if we are what we eat, there should be no surprise that many kids on tubes fail to truly thrive and blossom. If you ever run across such a patient, note the puffiness, pallor, lack of energy, and frequent GI issues. (For background, as you can imagine this is personal, the changes we saw in my son upon switching to a blenderized diet were fairly immediate and intensely positive.) Anyhow, my little soapbox.
- Olga in Seattle
Aug 28, 2011 7:43 AM EDT
Olga, I couldn't agree more with you!! It is as if there is no common sense in medicine. And don't get me started on hospital food overall - it is a catastrophe - and just shows how backward we are in medicine! Great Point!
- Alexa Fleckenstein