>The boys were at the age when their sperm cells...were forming. The studies showed that overindulgence in food or exposure to toxins at this key developmental stage left a biological memory on sperm cells that could be passed on to future generations.
This is not exactly accurate, because sperm cells are constantly re-created. It would be more accurate to say that some sort of epigenetic mechanism, that authors of the linked study admit they are not sure about, during the time of initial spermatogenesis can affect future spermatogenesis and therefore future generations.
The implications of epigenetic inheritance research, including regarding the fetal environment, are pretty shocking. Endocrine disrupting chemicals, drugs, smoking, and obesity can hurt your grandchildren.
> The implications of epigenetic inheritance research, including regarding the fetal environment, are pretty shocking. Endocrine disrupting chemicals, drugs, smoking, and obesity can hurt your grandchildren.
There's got to be some adaptive function for all these things.
If some sort of signal is passed down the generations, I bet that mechanism was honed by natural selection, because it was probably useful, in the grand scheme of things, to do so.
Natural selection is just an emergent process. Genetic errors at some stage are going to be passed to all descendants, regardless of utility. The harmfulness or usefulness of these errors is left as an exercise for mortality prior to reproduction - which, in modern society, may not be a particular useful factor.
Speaking from my rear, epigenetic influence on growth and development is too fundamental a force to be a random error heretofore untouched by selection. With humans being a social, communal species, adverse conditions tend to hit populations en masse. That means that, for much of our (and our close relative's) evolutionary history, it was relatively certain that, say, all of your neighbors were suffering from the same drought you were. It would thus be "okay" for your children to grow to a smaller, more nutritionally manageable size, because the people they'd be competing with for food, territory and mates would also be smaller. Remember, if genetics are physical destiny, and they say you're going to be big, your body is going to have a go at it, and incur whatever performative costs that come from trying to nourish a 6ft body with a 5'6" diet. Who's more fit: the latter, starving, or the former, relatively well-fed? This model gives the body a mechanism for titrating aspects of development according to local conditions, across the handful or less generations it used to take for those conditions to change.
I would not be surprised if this ultimately explains the global growth spurt that took place in the 20th century.
The popularity of the Darwin awards notwithstanding, mortality is not the only mechanism by which evolutionary pressure is applied - simply influencing the likelihood of having children (and recursively onward through descendants) is sufficient.
That gives wide latitude for more subtle influences (e.g. attractiveness, desire to have children) to have a large impact.
Not the main point, but it should be noted that the Darwin Awards are wide open to candidates with outstanding self-sterilizations, not just people that remove themselves from the gene pool by dying (hilariously).
That's a good point. I just wanted to emphasize that an epigenetic error being passed on is not a measure of its utility to an organism, rather, it is a necessary precondition for the resulting trait to be tested against the environment. Being a necessary element of "natural selection", the meta statement of calling this propagation a positive utility seems a bit incorrect, if only in verbiage.
Apologies if I'm misreading your comment, but not necessarily. If something affects the production of your germ cells (sperm or eggs) or the cells themselves, then it can affect your children. Something as simple as a mutation in the sperm or egg leading to offspring will be carried by your children.
If, however, your exposure leads to mutations in a genetic region that affects sperm or eggs, your children may be perfectly fine except for their germ cells, which can lead to an issue in their children, your grandchildren.
Unbelievably bad reporting on top of weak studies. From the article:
"...showed that young men who smoked just before puberty produced sons who were more likely to be overweight, beginning in adolescence."
So I looked at the study. They "found" that fathers who began smoking at very young age produced sons (but not daughters) with a higher BMI at age 9 (but not at 7). Note the fine distinctions, all from a sample size of just 330 such fathers. This reeks of a Munchhausen Grid.
But it gets better: the difference is between a BMI of 17.23 and one of 18.15. What an enormous difference! And both values are considered underweight.
So, guys, better start smoking before you're ten years old, or you risk siring underweight sons!
Normal BMI values are for adults. Child BMI differs somewhat sharply depending on age and gender.
This [1] is a tool from the CDC for measuring the BMI of children. For instance a 9 year old with a BMI of 22.5 (in the middle of the normal range for an adult) would be considered obese. A BMI of 17.6 (very underweight for an adult) would mean they're more overweight than 70% of other children their age, but it's still considered a healthy weight - just on the high side. By contrast dropping down just 1 BMI point (to 16.6) puts the child at the 55th percentile, meaning it's a perfectly average weight.
Also, the initial few lectures from Robert Sapolsky's lecture series[1] were an eyeopener for me. The exact mechanism of how environment affects epigenetics (transcription factors, etc.) was really fascinating!
I hope we get more research and recommendations regarding this. It'd be great for young (and old) men to have the information they need to make good decisions.
I don't think it takes more research to know you should be treating yourself well physically and mentally, eat well, sleep well, go outdoor and exercise, eliminate stress factors and don't consume drugs or alcohol.
Well, yes, it does actually. Not all 'common sense' solutions have the same impact. I will never understand this line of anti-science thinking. In the past, all sorts of 'obvious' advice turned out to be terribly wrong. For example, in the past, before knowledge of infectious disease, people would have told you that you didn't need scientific inquiry to understand how to stay well, just avoid 'bad air'. This was terrible advice as the air could be crisp and clear, but still contaminated with viruses or bateria, while polluted air could be free of the same agents.
Another example is low-fat diets. These are now known to not be as healthy as purported, and indeed for men, it is known that such a thing would actually lower testosterone, so maybe it's not just simply a matter of putting into motion the abstract ideal of 'treating yourself well', but actually a matter of offering targeted, specific advice.
We should not substitute 'common sense' with actual, careful study.
It's wrong to lump common sense advise together with the previously-scientific-until-proven-otherwise low-fat diets. Common sense here, in my opinion, should refer to what has been generationally observed. Even if there's mistakes in there, our bodies would have evolved to handle them well. It's when we try to substitute what has been a generational practice with careful study that we go wrong. Because careful study is not careful enough, and often makes the common mistake of prescribing new things, food, actions, processes, etc.
Miasma theory [1], as you are referencing, was not "obvious advice" - it was the scientific consensus, worldwide, for thousands of years in terms of the propagation of illness. Germ theories had been suggested by numerous people for many centuries, but a problem is that miasma theory was deeply entrenched as the consensus view and could also explain most things such as people who are around sick people also getting sick. It's a theory that was extremely difficult to falsify until it became undeniably wrong once we developed the technology to actually be able to literally see bacteria.
On top of scientific inertia, another issue is that "actual, careful study" often fails to detect things that are really there. A great example of this is scurvy. Scurvy at one time was one of the most virulent diseases there was. It killed many millions of people during the age of sail alone and long-term voyages simply accepted the reality that they would likely lose a significant portion of their crew to scurvy. [2]
We now know that scurvy is simply caused by a lack of vitamin C, but one problem with resolving the scurvy mystery over time is that the actual cure sounds absurdly hokey and superstitious. Oh you're dying from this absolutely awful disease that's causing your entire body to deteriorate and rot from the inside out? Here, suck on some limes - it'll cure you! And scientific trials to test the "lemon theory" (which had been written about for hundreds of years) failed to show any meaningful success. The reason is that exposing lime juice to light, air, and certain metals used in storage/delivery (all as happened during experimentation) worked to greatly reduce its vitamin c content.
It was also confounded by the fact that fresh meat also has lots of vitamin C. So you notice claims that fresh fruits seem to cure scurvy and fresh meats also seem to cure scurvy. This now led to the scientific view that the problem was caused by tainted food. So forth and so on, stumbling very awkwardly along again until we reached an era of technology where we could isolate and measure 'vitamin C' and finally prove, once and for all, it was indeed the root cause. As a fun aside, vitamin C was not initially named ascorbic acid. It was named hexuronic acid. It was renamed to antiscorbutic (against scurvy) acid, shortened to ascorbic, once it's effect was proven once and for all. This is also where the slang of a limey for a British sailor came from. They were one of the first nations to require a regular dosing of lime for their sailors.
So there's always a balance in life. It's important for the evolution of our entire species that not everybody believe the exact same thing. Common sense is usually right, but sometimes it's very wrong. And science is usually right, but sometimes it's very wrong. People diverging from the norm to pursue their own views and values is something that benefits everybody as they work as completely volunteer guinea pigs. And it's often the case both that common sense ends up complimenting science, as well as science complimenting common sense.
Everything you mention requires lots of research. "Eat well" is meaningless, for example. Depending on who you ask that might mean anything from paleo to its near polar opposite, vegan. The scientific consensus is not in. Hell, it's not even clear if eating whole eggs is good or bad for you, the recommendations keep seesawing.
Similarly ... How much exercise and what kinds? There's plenty of people who hurt or even kill themselves by doing the wrong kind of exercise, or overdoing it. Serious long distance runners, for example, die younger than more moderate exercisers, and they have terrible knee, foot, and hip problems past middle age.
Sam Harris' podcast had an episode with Gary Taubes where you can hear some interesting facts about there not being a consensus on what foods are good for you. Your example about eggs is a good one.
Re: exercise, I think it's clearly been established that the positive effects outweigh the negative ones. A few people may be killed cycling to work, but overall it's better for your personal health to cycle to work than to drive.
An extreme interpretation of any sport becomes difficult for your health, this does not include running 5-10Km distances.
An anecdote. I have a friend who used to walk everywhere in the city. They were always overweight but healthy. Flash forward to several years later. They are in the thick of a PhD program. The last couple years they have gained considerable weight. Lots of inactivity (sitting in a room all day) coupled with lack of sleep and not the best eating habits. And I recently learned that they have trouble walking, say, a parking lot distance. And their knees will start to hurt on a scale of 6 on a 10 scale if they do too much walking.
Too little exercise if accompanied by other less healthy life actions (sleep deprivation, less healthy diet) can rob you of one thing you might take for granted: mobility or the ability to walk across a long parking lot without strain.
There is no one size fits all recipe for how much physical activity. Your health is ultimately your responsibility.
Unfortunately, some of these studies suggest that the damage is done before you hit puberty. It shows that we should have more concern for how what behaviors we teach our children from the beginning will affect our grandchildren and even their children. It’s not enough to consider ourselves or our children in isolation. This is a communal problem, or even a societal one, as much as it is a familial one. And the consequences can span generations.
Side-related but it's one thing probably easier to add to a culture of extended family (where several generations stick together and live under the same roof etc). Not so much in Western countries where nuclear family has become the norm and we basically consider "external" or indeed "extended (family)" our parents as much as our future grand children, you know, on a day-to-day basis. The real links are stronger and more persistent than that it seems.
Well, depends. If you want to look like Thor, then yes, nutrition is complicated.
If you just want to stay in decent shape and be healthy it's not really that hard. Let me summarize it:
1. Don't eat processed food !!!!
2. Limit your portions to the size of a medium plate(don't stack it though)
3. Eat your green vegetables.
No need to count calories either, just split your plate in 3 roughly evenly sized slices:
1st should be protein(chicken breast, fish, eggs, low fat mozzarella or cottage cheese for example)
2nd should be starchy carbs(pasta, rice or potatoes for example)
3rd should be fibrous carbs(broccoli, spinach or bell peppers for example)
and lastly you can add a little healthy fats like a fist full of nuts, a slice of avocado or a few table spoons of olive oil(men need this healthy fat for testosterone production).
And you can play around with this like increasing the ratio of the starchy carb slice for breakfast/lunch for more energy during your evening workout and increase the ratio of the protein slice for dinner for better muscle recovery after your workout.
This has become all but meaningless as what it means to be processed varies so much and has come to include almost anything. You mention pasta, yet many definitions include flour as being processed. I've seen it go so far as defining anything with salt added as processed (even by you right before you eat it).
What is a reasonable definition of processed food that you can actually use when shopping?
I think the easiest answer: If it comes in a box or a bag with a list of ingredients, consider it processed.
Occasionally eating something that comes in that form is okay - so making pasta from a once a week won’t kill you ( at least not quick enough to matter). But if you find yourself opening a box or bag of something every night, you may want to think harder.
Something that has been mushed up from its original form to the point of being unrecognizable, bonus points for a bunch of different things mixed together, extra bonus points for containing things that were once in a big reaction vat.
Flour is like the granddaddy of all processed foods. Yes, it is processed. Modern nutrition studies tend to suck, because they are laughably narrow. Flour is probably the biggest thing we have been capable of studying on a population scale. Throughout history, flour has made many populations unhealthy and fat.
Olive oil is hugely controversial. Don't expect an answer on that.
Processing foods tends to remove the stuff which is good for you. That's why "whole" grain is advocated. You would do even better to selectively eat the wheat germ! So let me make the controversial but empirically true statement that it's possible to make a food more healthy by processing it. The reason processed foods are bad is because of our taste bud and business incentives.
That's why it's extremely problematic to focus on food processing, as opposed to an underlying nutrient understanding. The first thing that goes when we process foods is the fiber, and this is missing nutrient number 1 in the American diet.
As long we lack an ability to talk about the truly root issues with diet, reducing processed foods will do nothing (given sufficient time). Companies will figure out a way to call something unprocessed, but still give the same bad composition of nutrients.
Maybe olive oil, without doing much research, might be an exception where it is not harmful, as long as you know where it is coming from and has not been adulterated or diluted.
One of the problem with processed food is that it allows large quantities, which often means lower quality. Also, you don't see what it's actually being made of.
For example, in the olives article, it cited an instance of sub-standard, damaged olives being used to make olive oil
Even beyond that, it has lots of omega-6s. This is supposed to be competitive in cell chemistry with omega-3s, and the ratio is massively tilted in the omega-6 direction today.
And there's always the anti-fat faction. It's also a high calorie-density food. Like many of these topics, some people will argue that calorie density is irrelevant, but other people will disagree with them.
Ok, fine, but do you realize you stepped in to make a clarification for what other commenter might have meant by "processed" where that commenter (ChuckNorris89) explicitly said to both: 1. not eat processed food, 2. eat pasta and olive oil?
Is it a whole food or is it not? That's my only criteria. Sometimes whole foods could be argued as being processed and it wouldn't be wrong. I don't mince words over that, though. Uncooked non-brown rice is still rice, even if it went through some processing to get to me.
I'd make a couple tweaks... but double down on the don't eat processed foods, especially sugar. And add that you shouldn't be afraid of fat. I'd also suggest that some carb sources are better than others (barley or lentils over any form of wheat or soy). Of course, in general soy goes in the processed food category. Not to mention issues with GMO grains in general.
I'm also a solid believer in adding fasting cycles, reducing meal frequency etc.
I'd add to this: With abundant choices of carbs available, you can pretty much control weight gain based on which ones you consume. Sugar is first to go, followed by wheat, then corn, and at that point you're pretty much down to a collection of things that are hard to gain weight from (because they're a combo of fibrous and less exciting.) On the fruit side, bananas and grapes are probably worst, then apples and similar behind that, with berries being a somewhat safe bet on the other end.
See, the thing is, a lot of the latest research seems to suggest that healthy fats should make up a larger part of your diet, and that grains are actually pretty terrible for you. Like I said, it’s really not simple.
Additionally, a lot of plants require processing to be safe to eat, and many more are healthier if processed in some way. “Processed” is too generic to really mean anything.
Or you can just eat nothing but beef ribs and have the body of an adonis. Be suspicious of all advice for nutrition. The best I’ve ever felt in my life I ate nothing but ultraprocessed pork sausages with cheese and kimchi for six months. Slimmed down and felt amazing.
I eat a diet consisting mostly of starches, fat, and protein (including red meat), with some fruits added on (and basically no vegetables). I have a small stomach and live an active lifestyle so I have to load up on carbs to avoid getting exhausted during sports / activities. I also just dislike vegetables.
I got a bloodwork done at my last medical appointment and it came back perfect. High good cholesterol, low bad cholesterol, all the fats, proteins, etc. in the best ranges. The doctor then proceeded to go over all the things I must be doing right to have such good bloodworks but the only things I was actually doing were not ingesting too much sugar and exercising a lot. On everything else my diet basically consisted of the opposite of what is recommended.
> I got a bloodwork done at my last medical appointment and it came back perfect. High good cholesterol, low bad cholesterol, all the fats, proteins, etc. in the best ranges. The doctor then proceeded to go over all the things I must be doing right to have such good bloodworks but the only things I was actually doing were not ingesting too much sugar and exercising a lot. On everything else my diet basically consisted of the opposite of what is recommended.
Did the bloodwork include vitamin tests? If so, do you mind me asking what vitamins they tested for and how they came out?
I don't know why this is getting downvoted when it seems like a valid question to ask someone who does not eat any vegetables. Vitamin deficiencies can develop subtly into extremely serious problems. I have a condition that means I am more prone to them and, after having had mild scurvy, a vitamin D deficiency, a copper deficiency, a selenium deficiency, and many others, I would not wish them on my worst enemy. Most of the symptoms are basically not noticable, and develop so slowly that you don't realise them and tend to just get used to it, but they can cause A Lot Of Problems. Most of the main sources come from vegetables.
The difference is between good fibrous carbs, the ones that are nutritious, filling and low on calories like most green vegetables including broccoli and spinach, and "bad" starchy carbs(note the commas) like potatoes, pasta or rice which are not very nutritious but are high in calories and sugars which our bodies need for energy.
By "fibrous carbs" he means foodstuffs which are fibrous (containing, consisting of, or resembling fibers), and whose energy mainly comes from carbohydrates (as opposed to fat or protein).
One thing though: "well" is very idiosyncratic here — a different biology leads to different reactions. IMHO the most important is to listen to your own body, learn in time what makes you "well" and what doesn't. Might be very different even between siblings. Use data whenever possible to rule out misguiding perceptions.
What is really compelling to me is that some of these epigenetic markers can last several generations, with implications on why group differences are not ameliorated immediately even with an effective policy intervention.
Article very soft and studies as well. The bottom line is this:
Epigenetics is a thing and you need to be aware of it. And if you intend to conceive, you are doing your kid a disservice by not being in peak physical condition when you do so.
Only thing to add is that you are doing your kid a disservice by not being in peak physical condition during your adolescence and early adulthood as well, as epigenetics is also affected by what happens during your development, not just when you conceive.
I don't think that this principle is directly applicable here. DNA-based inheritance is still 50/50% split and I guess DNA is most important anyway. Although, the epigenetic one (let's assume its overall contribution is <5-10%) may be split according to something similar to Pareto.
Isn't this obvious? :) My dad thankfully told me about this when I was a teenager: don't smoke, drink, trash your body. Men need to tell their children, sons in particular.
I definitely stress-ate during puberty b/c of how shitty middle & high school were. I still have a 25.5 BMI which is just into the overweight category. (And I know BMI is not a perfect diagnostic tool, but let's just say I still have more bodyfat than I want.)
Just prescribing "don't do X vices" ignores the fact many people turn to vices to deal with shitty situations. I wish school had been better constructed so I wasn't stressed out at that time.
After being really stressed at work due to colleagues harassing me and being threatened to get fired I started to sleep poorly and put on a lot of weight despite exercising and eating well.
A lot of the times mental health, especially sleep quality, is more important as it will affect your physical health as well.
I hear you. Luckily, our bodies are pretty amazing. When we attempt to put it back together, it'll recover. Exercise, eat healthy daily. They'll do wonder to your bodies.
The only people who say "don't do X" are those who have no interest in X, and just enjoy being moral scolds, and don't have a serious interest in improving anyone's life, despite what they claim.
Because if you are serious about improving people's lives, you must meet them where they are, not where you imagine they ought to be. To use another analogy, being a moral scold is dealing with the world as 'oughts' when the world is a series of 'is'.
By another analogy, if you had a child who was having a problem with some vice, if you were to merely periodically send them a letter or mini-lecture pointing out they ought not to do the thing, you would be open to accusations that you did not do your best to help them.
Now obviously on the internet you cannot just reach into everyone's lives, but carrying about with overly broad rhetoric leaves everyone with the sense that after hitting 'reply' one sat back self satisfied they had made the world better by their words.
So let me reup: food is complex, and anyone who says that eating healthy is easy is wrong. They might find eating healthy is easy for them, but empirically they're so obviously wrong - if it were easy to eat healthy, then there would be no type 2 diabetes.
Err what? We don’t even understand nutrition in a single person that well. Some people thrive on a vegan cost, for others it’s unhealthy. The same is true for many other forms of diet.
The reason for this is that it’s incredibly hard to make meaningful studies over such long periods of time where so many other variables have an impact on health.
And now someone claims that they can trace some health aspects back over one or more generations? I call BS.
Not that this isn’t possible, but that such specific claims like higher BMI can be traced back to smoking fathers.
Well beef jerky is low carb, which is the in diet. There was an article about how you don't need to worry about processed red meat recently, so that is officially healthy.
The beer keeps you a chilled parent, and the coffee keeps you awake and keeps you alert after the beer and lack of sleep.
Plus coffee water has been boiled, and beer isnt a good habitat for nasties, and neither is jerky, so food poisoning should be much reduced.
Ah ah, anyway, this would be pointless if it makes you far more likely to reach death before having a chance to have kids. I guess it would be an optimization problem.
Maybe a guy takes caffeine because he's stressed about his financial security and can't sleep well, and the caffeine prevents him later from sleeping well at night propagating a vicious circle => worse babies.
> [...] and one of their studies showed that young men who smoked just before puberty produced sons who were more likely to be overweight [...]
My father started smoking when he was 7 y.o. (yes, seven, lol). I was born when he was 36. I'm almost 33 right now and have never been overweight in my entire life. Not even a little ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Of course! If only they had met you, they would have realized their mistake! An N of 1 counter example is the perfect way to disprove a statistical claim!
Maybe it's a causal claim being challenged, not a statistical claim. What is a statistical claim anyway? No observation will disprove another observation.
This is not exactly accurate, because sperm cells are constantly re-created. It would be more accurate to say that some sort of epigenetic mechanism, that authors of the linked study admit they are not sure about, during the time of initial spermatogenesis can affect future spermatogenesis and therefore future generations.
The implications of epigenetic inheritance research, including regarding the fetal environment, are pretty shocking. Endocrine disrupting chemicals, drugs, smoking, and obesity can hurt your grandchildren.