Gluttonous Male Mice Give Diabetes to Daughters

A prospective dad’s diet may affect the health of his future children, suggests a study of cross-generational nutritional impacts in mice.

Males were fed a high-fat diet, becoming obese and diabetic, then mated with lean, healthy females. At six weeks of age, or the mouse equivalent of puberty, their daughters became glucose-intolerant, a major step toward diabetes.

That overweight moms are more likely to have overweight babies is known, but the phenomenon hadn’t before been demonstrated in males of any species...