How exciting! We just got contacted by a reporter writing a story for a very large women’s fashion magazine doing a story about epigenetics, the science explaining how you can change your baby’s genes by changing what you put in your body.It’s awesome to see leading magazines like this one start to catch on to this important new information.

Here’s a quick view of what we talked about.

 

Our research shows that there are 3 main things that affect epigenetics:

 

Eating the right nutrients
Avoiding toxic foods
Relaxing and letting go of stress

 

However, since the article will be about food specifically, we didn’t talk much in the interview about stress. Here are the top two things to do to your diet for a healthy baby:

 

Get the right stuff:

  • Getting enough healthy saturated fats, which are the building blocks for baby’s (and mom’s) hormones, brains, and cell walls. Best sources: coconut, pastured organic egg yolks, grass-fed butter, grass-fed red meats.
  • Get enough omega 3 and omega 6 oils, but make sure they’re not damaged by cooking. Sources include raw nuts, olive oil, avocados, low mercury fish, and supplements.
  • Getting healthy protein: Heavily cooked protein is inflammatory and hard for your body to use. Even one protein smoothie made from hydrolyzed collagen or whey protein can do wonders
  • Get micro-nutrients from green vegetables and a broader range of supplements than a typical prenatal
  • VERY IMPORTANT: 1,000 IU of Vitamin D3 (not the kind found in milk) for every 25lbs of Mom’s body weight. This is critical for immune development and may even be tied to reducing autism and other birth defects.

Avoid the toxic stuff:

  • Soy – Soy contains estrogen-mimicking compounds. People today get too much estrogen from the environment, which is one of the reasons girls are entering puberty much earlier (especially on soy), and boys have smaller testes and reduced sperm count later in life. Soy has phytates that block mineral absorption, critical to a baby’s growth. And GMO soy (> 90% of all soy) is linked to higher allergies and fertility and organ problems in animals.
  • Refined or cooked omega 6 oils like vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, soy oil
  • Wheat (70% of us are not genetically able to handle the protein in wheat) it is tied to crooked teeth and spinal deformities.
  • Excess sugar or starch in any form, including excess fruit. Fruit sugar, fructose, makes you gain unhealthy weight and ages your tissues. Babies contain almost no fructose and it is not necessary or helpful for their growth! J
  • VERY IMPORTANT: Avoid MSG and Nutrasweet and all artificial sweeteners when pregnant. They are neurologically active and have no place in a woman’s body, pregnant or not. Use Stevia or Xylitol instead.
  • VERY IMPORTANT: Many common food molds have severe impacts on pregnancy health. While pregnant, NEVER eat food that you even suspect may not be perfectly fresh. Avoid most cheese and peanut butter for this reason.

There is more to say about exercise and stress, but since this was a food focused interview, we’ll cover exercise another time.

 

Also, check out this video of Dave’s last talk about health – it was very well received at the BIL Conference!