A heart-health researcher shows how mothers' diets shape their offspring's heart disease risk. Offspring of mothers fed a Western diet high in sugar and fat developed significantly more arterial plaque than offspring of mothers on standard diets, even when the offspring ate the same healthy food after weaning.
Check this out. Do you know what this is? This is staining of the aorta, a major blood vessel coming off the heart. Now, as a heart health researcher, these data floorbait because what they're showing in red is cardiovascular plaque, atherosclerosis. And what differentiates these two conditions is not actually what the animals ate. This is an animal model, but what their mothers ate. So both animals got the same diet, but in one case, the mother had a westernized diet rich in sugar and fat, and in the other case was a control. So really what these data are showing are the powers of epigenetic priming. What we eat, both men and women, impacts future generations. What our parents ate impacts us. These data are riveting. If you want more details, if you want to turn insights into action, check out the full letter
