Research
Hormonal
Early life nutritional environments (maternal undernutrition, high fat, or obesity) induce persistent epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation, histone changes) in offspring, programming them for increased risk of metabolic disorders, insulin resistance, and obesity in later life.
Focus on maternal health before and during pregnancy. Ensure adequate intake of methyl donors (folate, B12, choline) and avoid excessive weight gain or severe restriction. This is the most critical window for setting the child's metabolic health trajectory.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
alterations in early life nutrition lead to an increased risk for a range of metabolic and cardiovascular disorders in later life... environmental influences during critical periods of developmental plasticity can elicit lifelong effects on the health and well-being of the offspring.
Why this rating
Strong evidence from multiple animal models and human cohorts (Dutch Famine), though human mechanistic data is less extensive than animal data.
Source
Early Life Nutrition, Epigenetics and Programming of Later Life Disease
Mark H. Vickers · Nutrients · 2014
DOI 10.3390/nu6062165
narrative_reviewCited 359×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Maternal dietary supplementation with methyl donors (folate, choline, vitamin B12) can prevent or reverse epigenetic modifications caused by low-protein or obesogenic diets in offspring, normalizing gene expression related to metabolism.Good
- Paternal obesity and poor nutrition can transmit metabolic disease risk to offspring through epigenetic modifications in sperm (DNA methylation and microRNA), affecting the health of the F1 and potentially F2 generations.Moderate
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