The jury is still out on whether fasting is healthy or not. Researchers have revealed that fasting diets could, in fact, impact future generations.
The new research found that reduced food intake in roundworms has a detrimental effect on the lifespans of the next three generations of offspring – particularly when those descendants had access to unlimited food.
Researchers from East Anglia University assessed the effects of different scenarios on the reproduction and longevity across four generations of roundworms, calling the transparent creatures a classic model organism for studying the ageing process in biology because they do share many genes and molecular pathways that control development with humans.
The team discovered that fasting did indeed increase their lifespan and also improved offspring performance in terms of reproduction when offspring themselves were fasting. However, they were surprised to find that fasting reduced offspring performance when the offspring had access to unlimited food.
Publishing their findings in the journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B,' the team said that fasting diets have gotten quite popular in the last few years but we might need to also consider the multigenerational effects of the concept.