When it comes to ensuring the future health of a newborn, a lot of emphasis is placed on the mother’s lifestyle – as numerous studies have found that a mother’s weight and diet can heavily influence a fetus’s development in the womb.
But it may not just be mom’s eating habits that can affect an unborn child. New research from McGill University in Montreal has revealed that a father’s diet pre-conception may also play a crucial role in the future health of his offspring.
“We know the father contributes half the heritable information, so the potential is there to have an enormous impact on the development of offspring,” lead author Dr. Sarah Kimmins, Canada research chair in epigenetics, reproduction and development at McGill, told FoxNews.com. “But the research is all targeted at the mother. If you look at national sites, their phrasing is, ‘Women need to do the following preconception.’ Not a single word is there of the father.”