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What both our parents ate before we were conceived, as well as our prenatal and childhood nutrition impacts not only our adult health, but also determines what we look like. So if you want your kids to grow up healthy and good looking, choose their food carefully.

I had always thought that our appearance was determined by the genes we received from our parents, and that is obviously true, but I had not realized how large a role nutrition played in determining the full potential of our genes until I studied nutrition in a historical context.

The easiest way to understand this is to look at the issue from an architectural point of view. You have the plans for a beautiful and strong building that must be built by a particular date. (The Olympics are coming?)

So, you set out to begin your task, but the materials required are not available in the quantities needed to build it to the specifications in the blue print. This building must be built, so you are forced to alter the plan to make best use of the materials that you do have.

Hopefully better quality materials will come at some point, and you can try and improve the quality of the structure if that happens, but there are no guarantees.

The plans are asking for wide doorways going into large rooms, but because there don’t seem to be any thick, long beams available to support the roof over such large rooms, the rooms must be made smaller to accommodate the strength of the support struts that are available. Suddenly, the beautiful and strong building is looking smaller and more ordinary.

The same thing happens in the human body. Our genes provide the blueprint for a beautiful and strong body, but if we don't provide the raw materials (food) needed to create what is in the blueprint, the body must reallocate its resources and do what it can with what is available.

This shows up in the skull by a narrowing of the width of the head and jaw, resulting in less room for all the teeth. Teeth are forced to fight for bone space and often come in crooked, or they overlap, resulting in large orthodontist bills.

In adult bodies, inadequate raw materials in childhood shows up also as a smaller pelvis and ribcage, and long limbs. Smaller pelvises in women make child birth more difficult. If the bone structure of the trunk is narrow, the internal organs are permanently more squished, and there are potentially smaller openings for nerves and blood vessels heading into the limbs, making them more susceptible to irritation or damage.

Also if the length of the nose is smaller than the forehead to the hairline or the distance between the chin and the bottom of the nose (small middle third), the nasal passages and sinuses may be too small compromising breathing, which has enormous impacts on the health of the body.

Not too much one can do about widening the skull or the pelvis as an adult, which is why feeding our kids properly is so important to preventing these issues later.

In the western world we have plenty of food and most of us eat more than enough calories, yet many of us including our kids are still malnourished. How is that possible?

Weston A. Price came up with the saying "Proteins and fats make us GROW, and carbohydrates make us GO". Our cells are made structurally with protein and fats, while carbohydrates provide most of the energy to run the system.

So if the raw materials needed to build bones are quality animal proteins and fats, and a child is eating a diet too low in those nutrients to fulfill his/her genetic blueprint, his/her body will be forced to decrease the amount of bone it can make.

Bones become thinner, therefore less strong, and generally smaller in size. Because bone forms the framework for our body, an inability to make enough bone while growing compromises our structure and our appearance as adults. It is important to note that one can be quite overweight and still have a small pelvis and ribcage.

Whole sources of carbohydrates provide our body the fuel to it needs to function, and the vegetables in particular are a good source of vitamins, minerals and phyto-nutrients.

Carbohydrates can be converted into protein and fat in the body, and vegetarians that know about how to combine their grains and legumes properly can successfully make up all the amino acids (building blocks of protein) needed to make cells.

A few vegetarians might be able to get enough protein this way to keep their structure healthy over the long term. I think it is risky to put growing children on vegetarian diets, because if the child needs more protein and saturated fat than a vegetarian diet can provide, their skeleton will be compromised. Most of us being omnivores, really do need to eat enough flesh foods and animal fats to obtain the raw materials to grow and keep our structure strong.

The problem with the current grain-based diet recommendations is that many of us are eating too many processed grains in the form of flour as well as sugars at the expense of vegetables, grass-fed proteins, wild fish and animal fats, so despite eating plenty of calories, our cells are malnourished.

For example, a common breakfast might be Shredded Wheat with skim milk, a glass of orange juice and perhaps a piece of toast with jam. Except for some protein in the milk, everything else in this meal is carbohydrate – and the least healthy kind of carbohydrate at that.

These foods turn into sugar very quickly in the body causing a spike of insulin, which will then store that blood sugar as body fat unless the individual exercises. In addition, high sugar diets pull calcium from the bones further compromising bone integrity. There is no animal fat in this meal, so none of the fat soluble vitamins will be absorbed, and no calcium will be able to get into the bones. Even the orange juice doesn't contribute much to nourish the body unless it is fresh squeezed, as pasteurized juices have next to no vitamins left in them, and are best considered as flavoured sugar water.

Compare that breakfast to one made up of a small bowl of steel cut oats soaked overnight then cooked and served with whole milk, and a fried egg served on a bed of steamed spinach with some cherry tomatoes on the side. One gets protein and animal fats in the egg and dairy, carbohydrates in the oatmeal and veggies, along with lots of vitamins and minerals in the veggies and fats. This meal will probably keep one satisfied longer because it is more nourishing.

If you are hungry within two hours of your previous meal, most likely that meal did not give your cells adequate nutrition. They are starving for something, and that something is probably NOT more flour and sugar.

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