"Our results represent the first demonstration in humans that a mother's nutritional well-being at the time of conception can change how her child's genes will be interpreted, with a lifelong impact," senior study author Branwen Hennig, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement.

..."It's also important to note that their diet wasn't the only thing that changed — there was more physical activity due to farm labor during the rainy season, which contributed to weight loss during the rainy season and regaining of weight during the dry season," Waterland said. "Such changes contribute to what nutrients are circulating within the women."

...The long-term consequences of these epigenetic effects in children remain unknown. "We want to develop a catalog of all regions in the human genome that can get altered epigenetically by diet," Waterland said. "This will help give us the ability to tell what the likely role such changes might have in disease, and what particular diseases might be most likely to have an epigenetic component."