Childhood diet and future health

Still on my nutrition kick….

Knowing just how bad my diet was in my childhood, this article definitely caught my eye.

A University of Calgary study of rats found that different diets fed to the rats as youth impacted how their bodies processed food as mature mice.

“There’s a growing body of work that indicates a relationship between our health as adults and our early diet, and even our mother’s diet. This research shows for the first time that our early childhood diet may have a huge impact on our health as adults.”

This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

• I grew up in a rural middle-class household where frozen foods and carbs were our primary staples with little fresh produce. My parents did the best they could, but it was the reality of our situation.
• I guess I’ve taken the SAID principle pretty literally, and assumed that a clean diet today can hide the sins of old. Turns out that that may not be the case. I do recognize that eating clean now is better than poor eating in terms of overall longevity, so I’m not saying there is no point. Perhaps I just need to take a more holistic approach and realize that we really are a summation of EVERYTHING in the past, and while good reps will ultimately outnumber bad reps, the bad reps still count for something.

I don’t have any children of my own, but this post makes me doubly-glad to see that my brother and sister-in-law are raising my niece eating lots of fresh produce and veggies.