A healthful diet during pregnancy results in a healthy baby. This is common sense and universally known to be true. But research has discovered that a woman’s diet at the time of conception can permanently impact the genetic code of her baby.

The genes of the baby are forever changed by mom’s diet before and during pregnancy. Mother’s diet has direct implications for health outcomes of the next generation.

Contrary to common sense, the mothers with a lower protein diet and the least weight gain during pregnancy had the most favorable genetic pattern in their children. So, mother’s diet not only contributes to healthy growth of the unborn child, but it permanently affects the genetic make of her child for his or her entire life.

This unique kind of prenatal influence is proclaimed in the Bible. The mother of Samson was advised to begin eating a healthy diet before she conceived her son. This principle was not confirmed by science until this current study established the truth of this ancient counsel.

^“And the Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean. For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son…and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.’” Judges 13:3-5 (NKJV)

Ellen G. White, a 19 century health reformer, understood that the outcome of the future adult was dependent on the mother’s diet and temperament during pregnancy.

“The basis of a right character in the future man is made firm by habits of strict temperance in the mother prior to the birth of her child. . . . This lesson should not be regarded with indifference.” Adventist Home 258