For the most part, I eat pretty healthy but I have a lot of cravings. I crave sweets all the time but if I don't eat sweets for like a week then I don't really crave. My cravings sometimes revolve around my emotion so if i'm happy or sad I love anything sweet but if i'm stressed out, I tend to go towards salty food. I never have craved anything salty before unless I am stressed out. The thing that I mostly crave is chocolate. My twin brother and oldest brother are the same as me, they crave craves sweets all the time like chocolate and ice-cream. My dad and step brother crave salty stuff like french fries and potato chips. My mom honestly craves salty and sweet at the same time. She can be in the mood for bread and then 10 minutes later need something sweet. I wouldn't say that my family is addicted to their cravings or can't over power their cravings, they just eat it when they want to.
According to Renee Morad, a writer for the Scientific American, she says, "Epigenetics impacts cell differentiation and shapes how cells function in the long term, making it vital to understanding how nutrition during pregnancy may impact multiple generations" (Morad). Since my mom craves sweets, that could explain why her three children crave sweets. She could have fed us sweets as infants which would have been in our infant gut microbiota, influencing our body fat later in life as well as our cravings.
I don't think what I eat now could affect my children in the future because of my diet, exercise, environment, and mood can and will effect my gene expression (Morad). I do believe that what I eat while I am pregnant will for sure affect my offspring. In a study conducted at the German Research Center for Environmental Health in 2016, "genetically identical mice that consumed a high-fat diet were more likely to produce obese offspring with impaired glucose tolerance, an early sign of type 2 diabetes" (Morad). In order to protect myself from future addictions and disease, I need to continue to exercise regularly and not consume my cravings every single day, but I believe it is more than okay to eat what I crave and not feel like I am affecting my future biological children.
I believe alcohol can always cause damage to the consumer and the consumers future children. Dan Robitzski, a writer for Neoscope, says that, "Children of dads who drank three months before conception had a 44 percent increased relative risk of congenital heart defects compared to those of dads who stayed sober" (Robitzski). Drinking even before conception can affect the offspring's hypothalamus and the on-off switches of multiple genes. Knowing this will definitely affect my decision for drinking.
Morad, R. (n.d.). How Diet Can Change Your DNA. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/custom-media/science-for-life/how-diet-can-change-your-dna/
Robitzski, D. (2019, October 9). Dads drinking before conception may cause heart defects in babies. Retrieved from https://futurism.com/neoscope/dads-drinking-conception-heart-defects-babies