You are what your mother ate….

By 10. Juli 2013Blog, Health, Nutrition

..well, you are if you are a fruit fly. That’s the interesting research published in the PLOS ONE journal in March this year.

Fruit flies are often used in studies as they have many similarities with us. In this research the flies were fed two diets, one which was high protein and one which was high sugar. The offspring of the flies fed on the high protein diet developed faster and had more offspring than the offspring of the flies fed on the high sugar diet.

The researchers said there are still many questions to answer. For instance, for how many generations does this effect last? Is the effect maternal, paternal or both? What epigenetic changes are behind the effect? And does this have an effect on lifetime duration? I think they will be busy for a while.

The paper is available free on the PLOS website.