> Striking evidence that harsh conditions affect a man’s children came from crop failures and war ravaging Europe more than a century ago. In those unplanned hu

> Striking evidence that harsh conditions affect a man’s children came from crop failures and war ravaging Europe more than a century ago. In those unplanned human experiments, prolonged famine appeared to set off a host of health changes in future generations, including higher cholesterol levels and increased rates of obesity and diabetes. Going fairly out there, I wonder if this could perhaps be part of the cause of the current "obesity epidemic". If stress causes obesity in subsequent generations, and if we have obesity, maybe one explanation is that previous generations were extraordinarily stressed. Maybe there were social changes that cause our modern lives to be more stressful. Or even just being more consistently stressful might cause the incidence to go up.