Nutri-epigenetics and health

Diet during the first 1000 days of life can modulate offspring’s epigenome leading to tissue specific epigenetic marks associated with long-term effects on offspring health. Several environmental factors (e.g. diet, chemicals, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, drugs, stress, etc.) are actively involved in the modulation of the epigenome [1,2]. Maternal and neonatal nutrition can influence organ development (i.e. brain, heart, lung) promoting a healthy/unhealthy phenotype in adulthood. Food/environmental pesticides during pregnancy and/or lactation increases the individual risk associated with the development of neurodegeneration in adulthood, while endocrine disruptors have obesogenic properties promoting the development of associated diseases [3,4]. Of particular concern is that epigenetic marks of diseases may be inherited and they can mediate epigenetic inheritance of diseases [5,6]. Appropriate dietary nutrients, as well as dietary flavonoids and other bioactive compounds, can modulate chromatin structure and DNA methylation switching on/off genes properly. Selected foods can control inflammation and maintain a balanced redox state by modulating gene expression and gut microbiota responses toward specific metabolites that affect the epigenome. Therefore, early dietary interventions can modulate nutri-epigenetics towards a healthy status: the “epigenetic memory” of healthy food choices can confer cellular resilience to metabolic perturbations in adult age.