Lessons learned from talking with adults about nutrition: A qualitative study in the PREPARED project

Improving diet and dietary behaviour of men and women before pregnancy has the potential to benefit both their current and long-term health and the health of their children. Little is known, however, about adults' perception of diet's role in prepregnancy health. This study aimed to explore the state of knowledge and awareness of preconception nutritional health in adults within the fertile age range and what they perceived could motivate healthy eating using the self-determination theory as a theoretical framework. We analysed 33 short exploratory interviews with men (n = 18) and women (n = 15) aged 18-45 years. Participants were grab sampled from three different public locations in the southern part of Norway. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim in 2020 and analysed using a thematic analysis with a semantic approach in 2022. The findings suggest that adults within the fertile age range are not intrinsically motivated to eat healthily, but when they do, it is because eating healthily often aligns with other goals consistent with their values, that is, getting fit or looking good. They possess some basic knowledge of healthy behaviours during pregnancy but are generally unaware of the importance of preconception health and nutrition. There is a need to increase awareness of the impact of preconception health on the health of this and future generations. Improved nutritional education on the significance of diet before conception might facilitate optimal conditions for conceiving and for pregnancy in the adult population within fertile age range.

Paternal high protein diet modulates body composition, insulin sensitivity, epigenetics, and gut microbiota intergenerationally in rats

Mounting evidence demonstrates that paternal diet programs offspring metabolism. However, the contribution of a pre-conception paternal high protein (HP) diet to offspring metabolism, gut microbiota, and epigenetic changes remains unclear. Here we show that paternal HP intake in Sprague Dawley rats programs protective metabolic outcomes in offspring. Compared to paternal high fat/sucrose (HF/S), HP diet improved body composition and insulin sensitivity and improved circulating satiety hormones and cecal short-chain fatty acids compared to HF/S and control diet (P < .05). Further, using 16S rRNA gene sequencing to assess gut microbial composition, we observed increased alpha diversity, distinct bacterial clustering, and increased abundance of Bifidobacterium, Akkermansia, Bacteroides, and Marvinbryantia in HP fathers and/or male and female adult offspring. At the epigenetic level, DNMT1and 3b expression was altered intergenerationally. Our study identifies paternal HP diet as a modulator of gut microbial composition, epigenetic markers, and metabolic function intergenerationally.

Consequences of Paternal Nutrition on Offspring Health and Disease

It is well established that the maternal diet during the periconceptional period affects the progeny’s health. A growing body of evidence suggests that the paternal diet also influences disease onset in offspring. For many years, sperm was considered only to contribute half of the progeny’s genome. It now appears that it also plays a crucial role in health and disease in offspring’s adult life. The nutritional status and environmental exposure of fathers during their childhood and/or the periconceptional period have significant transgenerational consequences. This review aims to describe the effects of various human and rodent paternal feeding patterns on progeny’s metabolism and health, including fasting or intermittent fasting, low-protein and folic acid deficient food, and overnutrition in high-fat and high-sugar diets. The impact on pregnancy outcome, metabolic pathways, and chronic disease onset will be described. The biological and epigenetic mechanisms underlying the transmission from fathers to their progeny will be discussed. All these data provide evidence of the impact of paternal nutrition on progeny health which could lead to preventive diet recommendations for future fathers.