Verified by 
Your decisions regarding your diet affect your own mental health. Each person takes responsibility for making these decisions and each person suffers the consequences for making poor decisions in the form of obesity, diabetes, susceptibility to cancer or poor mental health. Recently, a series of studies suggested that the negative effects of your diet today can be transmitted across generations and influence the mental health of your grandchildren and their children.
Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with your genes; the reason lies in understanding how epigenetic forces influence your DNA. Epigenetic refers to non-genetic changes in how your body accesses information stored in your DNA. These changes are not mutations but they are inheritable. For example, in order for your brain to function normally your DNA is accessed for instructions on which chemicals to produce or how and when to produce them. If you cannot obtain access to those instructions, or read them correctly, you might produce the wrong chemicals or not produce them at all.
For example, what if you needed to produce serotonin in your brain but for some reason your serotonin gene was not accessible because of an epigenetic modification? The consequence is that you might experience prolonged anxiety or depression or be more vulnerable to developing a severe psychiatric disorder. Neuroscientists have known for many years that personality traits and the tendency for anxiety, depression and many other psychiatric disorders are inherited; now it appears that our lifestyle and dietary choices might also contribute to the mental health of future generations.
One recent study examined one hundred years of birth, death and health records, beginning with those born in 1890, of three hundred families from an isolated Swedish village, Överkalix. The scientists discovered evidence for a transgenerational effect of poor nutrition upon diabetes and early death. Diabetes is now known to be a risk factor for developing dementia later in life. The specific mechanism underlying this transgenerational phenomenon still remains to be understood, however it is known that some neurotransmitter systems are quite susceptible to epigenetic modifications. Future studies will now try to understand the contribution of these modifications to specific aspects of mental health.
Within the lifespan of each person, the consequences of diet upon brain health are as slow and imperceptible as the changes that characterize normal brain aging. These recent studies suggest that far more is a risk than just our own mental health; we also have a responsibility to the offspring of our descendants.
© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. Author of Your Brain on Food (oxford, 2010)
