Nutrition echoes across generations

Nutrition today affects our own health and influences the health of our future children—and even grandchildren.

You may already know that the food a woman eats while pregnant and breastfeeding has a direct effect on her developing baby. But you may not know that what a woman eats before pregnancy may be even more important.

Good nutrition before becoming pregnant builds a healthy body that will be ready to support a developing baby. While a woman provides the environment that nurtures her developing child, society plays a role in nurturing the next generation of parents. The food environment we create for adolescents, expecting women and mothers has the power to change society’s overall health.

Working together to ensure easy access to nutritious food for all, we aren’t just improving health today – we are investing in the health of future generations.

Why early nutrition matters

A woman builds up nutritional reserves throughout her life. During pregnancy, a developing baby draws on both the nutrients she consumes each day, and the reserves stored in her tissues.

Powerful evidence now shows that the nutrition available early in development can create lasting changes in how the body grows and functions. These changes don’t alter the baby’s genes themselves, but rather the biological “switches” that determine whether those genes are turned on or off.

When nutrition is limited or stress levels are high, these switches can make a child more vulnerable to chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes later in life. Remarkably, some of these changes can then be passed on to the next generation.

What grandma’s diet has to with your health

Here’s where things get interesting and a little complicated.

A baby girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have – the eggs that could one day become her own children. Those eggs are nourished while the baby girl is developing in her mother’s womb.

In other words, when a woman is pregnant with a daughter, she is also nourishing the cells that may one day become her grandchildren.

Seen from another perspective, the egg that eventually became you was nourished while your mother was growing in your grandmother’s womb. This means that your grandmother’s nutrition, experiences and health may have influenced your own health risks today.

That’s the power of nutrition across generations.