Junk food gets encoded in DNA of future children, scientists discover

from: http://rt.com/news/171228-diet-heredity-study-dna/

Published time: July 08, 2014 14:29

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Children, Food, Globalization, Health, Robert Bridge, Science, USA

The next time you wolf down that Big Mac with large fries consider you may be affecting more than your own waistline. Scientists now say an unhealthy diet can be encoded into DNA, which is passed down to future generations.
By now, most people have heard various negative things about a Western diet: it is too fatty, too salty and too sugary. It can cause problems to the immune system, disturb the chemical makeup of the stomach, and, perhaps the most obvious of all symptoms, lead to obesity.

Now, a study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Maryland has provided yet another reason to drive past your favorite drive thru window: the deleterious effects of a poor diet can leave a mark on the DNA, passing along the genes to your offspring.

The harmful effects of an unhealthy diet can “actually stretch across generations,” wrote Ian Myles, author of the study, which appeared in Nutrition Journal.

Image from nutritionj.com

Myles demonstrated that a mother’s eating habits “may potentially shape her child’s flavor preferences even before birth, potentially skewing their palette towards anything from vegetables to sugary sweets.” Passing along the proverbial sweet tooth could contribute to a child’s propensity to become obese at some point in his or her life.
“When the mother’s diet causes a harmful imbalance of her bacteria, she passes this imbalance on to her child and thus fails to present the ideal commensals for a proper immune education during her child’s most critical developmental window,” according to the study.

This developmental imbalance leaves the baby’s immune system “poorly trained to fight off infections and encourages autoimmune and allergic diseases.”

Myles cautioned that the father’s dietary choices in life also play an important role in the health of offspring.

The paternal DNA “can also be inherited by the offspring and could alter early development of the immune system [52],”according to the study. “Epigenetic changes in DNA are, in effect, cellular memory; these changes prevent dividing pancreas cells from becoming cells of the kidney or any other organ.”

Reuters / Simon Newman

Myles concludes that only a radical change of lifestyle will stop the transfer of stained DNA to future generations of babies. He also warned on the apparent uselessness of commercial extracts as a means of countering a poor diet.

“The benefits of dietary modification over supplementation is furthered by evidence showing that dietary supplementation does not increase longevity, indicating that…commercial interventions such as tea or berry extracts are unlikely to counteract poor dietary habits,” he advised.

Myles advised that people should eliminate sugar and fat in processed form from their diets and move to fresh sources of protein – and fat – such as fish and meat.

Image from nutritionj.com

Mediterranean diet has many health benefits, and may help control

from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/mediterranean-diet-has-many-health-benefits-and-may-help-control-kids-weight/2014/06/30/9edda4b6-fd40-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html

The high fiber content of the foods typically found in the Mediterranean diet may play a role in helping kids control weight, a researcher says. (Bigstock)

By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe and Live ScienceJune 30

Children who eat a Mediterranean-style diet may be less likely to be overweight or obese than kids who do not, a new study suggests.
In the study, researchers looked at children ages 2 to 9 in eight European countries and found that those who were on a Mediterranean diet were 15 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than those who didn’t. The link held regardless of where the kids lived, the researchers said.
Interestingly, the children who were most likely to follow the diet closely — with a high intake of vegetables, fruit, nuts, fish and cereal grains — were those in Sweden, and the least likely came from Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean.
“The fact that the Swedish children scored the highest while the children from Cyprus turned out to have the lowest adherence to a Mediterranean diet was actually a bit surprising,” said study author Gianluca Tognon at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. [10 Ways to Promote Kids’ Healthy Eating Habits]
The researchers used data from a large study of the health effects of children’s diets that was conducted between 2006 and 2012. The goal of the study was to assess the problem of obesity in European children.

The Mediterranean diet is high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and fish and low in animal fat. (Bigstock)

The investigators focused on the measurements of weight, height, waist circumference and body fat in about 9,000 children in Sweden, Germany, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Belgium, Estonia and Hungary.
Previous research among adults has found an association between those who follow the Mediterranean diet and a decreased risk of heart attack, stroke and death from heart disease.
“We wanted to know more about if children adhere to a Mediterranean-like diet, and if this pattern could protect [them] from obesity,” Tognon said.

The mechanism that may link the Mediterranean diet with a lower risk of being overweight or obese is not completely clear, he said. However, the high fiber content of the foods typically found in the Mediterranean diet may play a role, he said.

Tognon recommended that, besides getting their kids to eat fruits and vegetables, parents in those areas “encourage a higher consumption of nuts, legumes, fish and whole-grain cereals, which are also not so popular among children.”
The results also showed that among the children in the study, those in Italy had the lowest intake of vegetables. But Tognon, who is Italian, said this finding did not surprise him because when he was working in Italy, he had seen data that pointed to similar tendencies.
“We have constantly been told that our food and diet [in Italy] are both tasty and healthy, but I think that it is time for a wake-up call for both the population and the health authorities in south Europe, before this kind of dietary pattern will stop being called ‘Mediterranean,’ ” he said.