Fast food gets encoded in the DNA of future children, study finds.

Fast food gets encoded in the DNA of future children, study finds. (RT).

The next time you wolf down that Big Mac with large fries consider you may be affecting more than your own waistline. Scientists now say an unhealthy diet can be encoded into DNA, which is passed down to future generations.

By now, most people have heard various negative things about a Western diet: it is too fatty, too salty and too sugary. It can cause problems to the immune system, disturb the chemical makeup of the stomach, and, perhaps the most obvious of all symptoms, lead to obesity.

Now, a study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Maryland has provided yet another reason to drive past your favorite drive thru window: the deleterious effects of a poor diet can leave a mark on the DNA, passing along the genes to your offspring.

The harmful effects of an unhealthy diet can “actually stretch across generations,” wrote Ian Myles, author of the study, which appeared in Nutrition Journal.

Myles concludes that only a radical change of lifestyle will stop the transfer of stained DNA to future generations of babies. He also warned on the apparent uselessness of commercial extracts as a means of countering a poor diet.

“The benefits of dietary modification over supplementation is furthered by evidence showing that dietary supplementation does not increase longevity, indicating that…commercial interventions such as tea or berry extracts are unlikely to counteract poor dietary habits,” he advised.

Myles advised that people should eliminate sugar and fat in processed form from their diets and move to fresh sources of protein – and fat – such as fish and meat. Read the full story here.