Recently New York City banned extra large sugary sodas and encouraged a healthy diet. Many scoffed at New York City’s intrusion into individual diets. However more and more studies are being done that link diet to long-term health effects beyond weight control. Instead of thinking that NYC has just become an overbearing “mother” of a city, it might be hailed in future generations as a public health visionary.

We all know that eating well and being healthy during pregnancy is just one of the many positive things that we can do for our babies. But studies are now showing that eating well and keeping in shape BEFORE you get pregnant might play just as significant a role as well.

A study done in the FASEB Journal, conducted with mice, has shown that a diet high in fiber and low in fatty acids prior to pregnancy “chemically alters the mother’s DNA and passes these changes along to their offspring.” Big-ticket health items like cancer, obesity and diabetes could potentially be affected in the offspring by what the mother eats before she even conceives.

Mihai Niculescu, M.D., Ph.D., from the Nutrition Research Institute at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill says: “As parents, we have to understand better that our responsibilities to our children are not only of a social, economical, or educational nature, but that our own biological status can contribute to the fate of our children, and this effect can be long lasting.”

Not that you needed another reason to eat well, work out, and keep yourself healthy. But now here is clear medical evidence that doing so, even before pregnancy, could alter the health of baby for the better.

So go on out there: hit the gym, take a run, go do some down dog, and drink a glass of water instead of a soda. It’s worth it, for your own health, and the future health of your baby.

- Lee