Consider Prenatal environment and exposure to food, chemicals

[Aytundra]

http://www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_p ... rn#t-19666
A TED talk video featuring Annie Murphy Paul and her presentation "What we learn before we're born."

Quick Summary of Video:
In the video Annie Murphy Paul talks about how food exposure in the womb were correlated with infants choice of food after birth.
Women that ate a lot of carrot before birth --> infant showed preference for carrots after birth
Similarly, licorice before birth --> infants showed preference for licorice after birth

She talks about malnutrition in WWII in the Netherlands and adults born of that short period of food scarcity, were found to have greater obesity levels, explained by her as a response to scarcity of food in the womb environment, leading to the hoarding of calories inside those individuals, which is made possible by the abundance in food supply because the war had stopped, factoring into the a possible cause of obesity.

She talks about Sept11 in USA and how blood samples of pregnant women living near that disaster at that time, have markers of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Chemicals of the environment like the toxic dust from that disaster makes it to the amniotic fluids and signals to fetus what the world is like out there, "Postcards to the womb" as she calls it, explained by her as possible to help fetus prepare on how to respond to the environment.

Mainly the video asks people to consider their choices of chemical exposure for the next generation, in the environment around them, and especially for women that are pregnant.