Your Granny and Pottinger’s Cat

Dr Fi Dann Ray MSc Applied Toxicology, MSC Chiropractic

August 2018

Poor nutrition affects generations.

We may well be able to blame our grandparents for some of the state of our health today.   It sounds startling, yet there is plenty of evidence that the diet and health of previous generations impacts us, as the diet and lifestyle decisions we make pre children can affect subsequent generations.

There is of course substantial poverty, social class and other social factors that come in to inter-generational health, but for this article I’d like to focus purely on nutrition.

Why does the Indian subcontinent have such an issue with diabetes?

The incidence of type 2 diabetes on the Indian subcontinent, and in people of Indian descent living in the west has skyrocketed. Although there is some evidence of genetic predisposition, a major risk factor could well be the past generations.

Hardikar et al (2015)[i] fed a control group of rats a diet typical of calorie and protein malnutrition to model the effect of generations of under-nutrition in the developing world. The underfed rats were born small, never catching up growth-wise with the control group. The health effect on the rats was basically to greatly increase their risk of diabetes and heart disease[1]. After 50 generations, the rats were fed a normal good quality rat diet for 2 more generations to see if this removed the effects of the prior generations malnourishment. The results were startling. Whilst the birth weight was again normal, the risk factors for diabetes, obesity and heart disease were still heightened and had not returned to control levels. Circulating homocysteine was indeed even higher than for the malnourished rats, and is a noted risk for heart disease.   It would have been good to see how many generations it took to undo the damage caused by multiple generations of malnourishment, but even at two generations the effect was still seen .

Some studies have looked at the third generation to be fed a normal diet after the previous generations were restricted, and even in these rats, the great grandkids of the poor diet rats, with their parents and grand parents fed correctly had altered glucose metabolism in both male and female rats[ii]. There was some movement back toward normal values but this looked like it would take more generations to return to normal.   This was the effect of an adverse condition for one generation on the lives of the subsequent 3 and more generations.

From Hardikar et al (2015)[iii]

Pottinger’s cats

Pottinger’s cat study is another famous experiment about the effect of nutrition down the generations.   He used cats for some of his research testing the strength of adrenal extracts. The cats would be operated on to remove their adrenal glands and then given adrenal extract to test the strength was to standard. These cats were fed on leftover restaurant food for most of the year, but were fed on raw meat from the local abattoir during the off-season. He noticed the cats were healthier and had better post surgery survival rates on the raw meat diet. To investigate this further Dr Pottinger conducted a 10 year long 9 generation study to look at the effect of raw versus cooked food diets for cats.

The first group was fed raw milk, raw meat, organ meat and bones. The second group had the same diet but pasteurised/ cooked.   The raw food group were healthy down the entire 9 generations, had litter sizes of 5 kittens on average and mostly died of old age. For the cooked food group, results were entirely different . Problems were apparent from the first generation.

To quote Pottinger himself,

‘The cats in group two (cooked food) however began developing problems from the first generation, with increased deaths in the litters, smaller litter sizes, poorer mothering, noticeable dull rough coats. From the second generation onwards there were vision problems (probably taurine deficiency), common infections, and dermatitis (military dermatitis), arthritis, heart disease (taurine again), allergies, gingivitis and periodontal disease, inflamed joints and nervous tissue, skeletal malformation (Calcium bone density fell from 17 % at the start, to 4% by the fourth generation). Fertility declined rapidly, as did litter size and perinatal mortality increased. Behaviourally the group on cooked food became progressively more aggressive to handlers and each other. Interestingly gastrointestinal parasitism was a major problem in the cooked food group, not the raw food group. The most common cause of death in adults in the cooked food group was from pneumonia and lung abscess, and in kittens was from diarrhoea and infection. By the ninth generation on cooked food the cats were completely sterile and had stopped reproducing.’[iv]

Dr Pottinger also looked at whether these changes were reversible, and found that they were up to the 3^rd generation, however for the fourth generation onward much was irreversible.   He also checked white mice for the same findings and replicated the effects seen. Ever the complete researcher he also found that whilst beans and grass grew vigorously in ground fertilised in faeces from raw food fed cats, the same could not be said for the ground fertilised by the cooked diet cats poo. While vitamin and taurine deficiency are at the heart of most of the observed effects, it is the amplification of these effects down the generations that is of concern.

Standard American Diet (SAD)

The effect of the modern ‘standard American diet’ for instance, with its high refined carbohydrate levels, increased junk food and soda consumption and high corn fed red meat consumption on future generations is of great concern.

1 in 4 Americans for instance consume less than the estimated average requirement (EAR= level to avoid deficiency, not level needed for optimal health) for vitamin C[v].

Other key nutrients

These values just reflect intake, not the utilisation of the nutrients or increased need due to a high sugar pro-inflammatory diet, or increased need due to genetic variations in the workings of various enzymes.

Imagine a person born in the late 1950’s, to a mum that ate a fair quantity of white bread, sugar in various forms, canned foods and was smoking.   They would most likely grow up eating a diet even higher in refined foods than their parent did. Lets say they have a child in the late 1970’s and that child is again eating a diet fairly rich in refined foods. That child may have had a few more health issues than their parent’s generation, maybe more period pain, a greater tendency to depression or gut issues. Imagine now they have a child in the late 1990’s. Maybe that child has allergies, asthma, ADHD or even autism…… Now they may be having a child….. I can certainly think of many families where this pattern can be seen.

In addition to the other toxicity related causes of childhood problems, we need to look at whether we as a society are also re-running Pottinger’s cat experiment.  Are we seeing the effect of a few generations of processed food on the children of today?

[1] in detail they had increased adiposity (fat) and increased insulin resistance. There were epigenetic changes to dampen insulin expression via histone modification. ECG’s were altered, diabetes susceptibility increased, raised homocysteine and reduced B12.

References.

[i] Hardikar et al., Multigenerational Undernutrition Increases Susceptibility to Obesity and Diabetes that Is Not Reversed after Dietary Recuperation, Cell Metabolism (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2015.06.008

[ii] Benyshek, D. C., Johnston, C. S., & Martin, J. F. (2006, May). Glucose metabolism is altered in the adequately-nourished grand-offspring (F3generation) of rats malnourished during gestation and perinatal life [5]. Diabetologia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-006-0196-5

[iii] Hardikar et al., Multigenerational Undernutrition Increases Susceptibility to Obesity and Diabetes that Is Not Reversed after Dietary Recuperation, Cell Metabolism (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2015.06.008

[iv] https://vetsallnatural.com.au/pottengers-cat-study/

[v] Victor L. Fulgoni, Debra R. Keast, Regan L. Bailey, Johanna Dwyer; Foods, Fortificants, and Supplements: Where Do Americans Get Their Nutrients?, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 141, Issue 10, 1 October 2011, Pages 1847–1854, https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.111.142257