Your mom’s eating patterns can affect your obesity?

On top of all the responsibilities parents already face, we now understand that our personal habits can have an impact on not just our children, but our grandchildren, and who knows how many generations from there. Nearly two years ago, we talked about a study by David Martin of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute that showed that a grandmother mouse’s diet could affect the fur color of her grandchildren.

Now Robert Waterland and his colleagues have shown that a mother mouse’s diet can influence the obesity of her offspring [1]. In a strain of mice prone to obesity, rates of obesity typically increased from one generation to the next. However, when the diet of the mice was supplemented with folic acid, vitamin B-12, choline, and betaine, the subsequent generations did not show the expected increase in weight. The authors suggest that these supplements somehow interacted with the obesity genes. In case you’re wondering, the mouse obesity genes that characterize this strain do not apparently have an analog in humans.

I do not pretend to be nutritionally-literate, and although I’m familiar with folic acid, vitamin B12, choline and their natural sources in food, I confess to being unfamiliar with betaine. Actually, it appears that I should say “betaines” plural, as these seem to come in many forms. One form, trimethylglycine, comes from sugar beets, but I’m not certain that this is the form used by Waterland et al. I had better do some more research on this as soon as my library access to the full-text article kicks in.

Pregnant moms-to-be are already advised to eat carefully. It will be interesting to see whether or not eating patterns and other habits prior to pregnancy have effects, too.

I don’t like the idea that any dietary misbehavior on my part might have influenced my daughters’ future weight. I really did try to be very careful. I think researchers might also consider the impact of a particular fetus on the mother’s eating habits. A family joke chez Freberg revolves around my insatiable craving for steak during my pregnancy with daughter Karen, and her subsequent steak-loving habits. I am not normally much of a carnivore, but I made many an exception while pregnant with Karen! So if we moms affect our children, I’m not so sure they don’t affect us, too!

1.  Waterland, R.A., Travisano, M., Tabiliani, K.G., Rached, M.T., & Mirza, S. (2008). Methyl donor supplementation prevents transgenerational amplification of obesity. International Journal of Obesity advance online publication 15 July 2008; doi: 10.1038/ijo.2008.100