Nutrition reviews
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Nutrition is now becoming once more of intense interest to biological and medical scientists working on the control of development and human health. It is also now of ever greater public health interest. Few scientists, however, recognize that the same interest for those involved in fundamental science and public health developed a century ago focusing on the way in which nutrition and specific micronutrients, as well as general energy and protein intakes, were crucial to infant growth and appropriate development. ⋯ New evidence on epigenetics and the structural changes in the fetus in response to inappropriate maternal diets provides mechanisms to explain this. Unfortunately, a vicious intergenerational cycle of maternal and fetal epigenetic change seems to herald markedly increased future burdens of disease. The nutrition field is therefore challenged not only in terms of science, but also in new dimensions of public health of immense economic significance.