Epigenetics: An Excuse or a Warning? Your Choice!

I just finished reading an article in the January 2010 issue of Time magazine: Why Genes Aren’t Destiny. (Yep, a little behind on my reading.) I’ve understood the concept of epigenetics for a while, which means that we may have the genes for a specific disease, such as obesity, but that gene could remain dormant in the right environment. This article explored the work of Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, who wondered what effects feast and famine had on the offspring of the families that lived in Norrbotten, a remote village in northern Sweden.

When the harvest was bad in Norrbotten, people starved; when the harvest was good, people gorged themselves. Bygren’s research showed that “kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season” produced offspring who lived far shorter lives – approximately six years shorter than those kids who endured a scarce harvest.

Reading those findings reminded me of a book I'd bought years ago: The 120-Year Diet. The premise of this book is based on a diet high in nutrition and low in calories. Dr. Roy Walford's research indicated that we would live much longer by being underweight. The secret, of course, for his premise to work is to consume food that is truly high in nutrition. Because of mass production of our fruits and vegetables, the nutrition content is lower than it’s ever been. It seems then that by attempting to grow more food, we are actually getting less nutrition.

In many ways, we’ve lost sight of what is important for us to live: food, water, and oxygen. We seem to be more focused on our cell phones and the latest flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Not that those things aren’t important, but perhaps we should pay just a little more attention to the nutritional value of what we ingest. Not only do our lives depend on it, but our kids’ lives do too.