subject: Paternal Diet Affects Future Children [print this page] Paternal Diet Affects Future Children Paternal Diet Affects Future Children
A new research study on the dietary habits of parents to be shows that they have lasting effects on their children when it comes to obesity risk. A research study published in the October edition of Nature highlights the importance of choosing to live a healthy lifestyle, because among its benefits for us, it also has lasting effects on our children.
In the research study done in Australia, the researchers took healthy rats and fed them a "cafeteria" diet, one that is high in saturated fat, sugars, and is known to make them obese. The rats, as expected gained weight throughout their life and became obese and had insulin resistance (meaning an impaired ability to metabolize and regulate sugar). In other words, the rats became obese, sedentary animals that were at a high risk of dying from metabolic diseases such as heart disease or diabetes, the number one and number two killers in the United States. What these researchers were interested in though, was what the offspring would be like. Would they be altered compared to rats that were fed a healthy diet and exercise regularly? To the scientists surprise, when the offspring were born and grew to an age that they could be studied they were really very different! The young rats from obese parents fed the "cafeteria" diet had altered gene expression of over 600 genes in the pancreas (the organ that produces insulin and is key to diabetes risk).
The pancreas is the organ in the body that releases insulin, a key hormone to regulate blood sugar, and in diabetics the pancreas either has to work harder than usual to produce more insulin than in non-diabetics, or in a worst case scenario, the pancreas actually stops producing insulin, as happens in Type I diabetes, then individuals must inject insulin throughout the day.
Finding such a large change in the expression of genes in the offspring of obese cafeteria fed rats is a scary clue according to researchers as to why childhood obesity is such a problem in the United States and some parts of Europe. With obesity rates at over 1 in 3 individuals and diabetes rates at 1 in 10, public health officials are scared that future generations could be much worse off due to the poor diet and health of their parents. In fact the recent trends made public health officials at the National Institutes of Health to adjust their estimates of future levels of diabetes to be as high as 1 in 4 Americans by 2030, an astonishing figure.
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