Our 31st wedding anniversary came during the holidays. Our son was coming home. Our daughter was having finals. We were in and out of town. The days and nights were really busy. One night we started off to do two errands. We planned to have a quiet anniversary dinner afterwards. The two errands took longer than expected, and one of them got us both a bit agitated. The mood was not right for a romantic dinner. So we put off celebrating our anniversary until after the New Year.

My Honorable Husband - he really is honorable by the way. I blew out a tire on the way to work today. Shredded it. Picture a cartoon character after a TNT explosion. But HH keeps the spare tire filled, and he keeps our AAA coverage up to date. I didn't have to struggle with lug nuts in the cold rain. See why I love him. But I have digressed.

My Honorable Husband said he was taking me out last night, and he wanted me to pick the restaurant. I chose Outback Steakhouse. I picked it for several reasons. I can cook beef in a lot of tasty ways, but I can't cook a steak in my oven that compares with a steakhouse steak. But most steakhouses serve their steak with salad and baked potato. Outback has vegetables. It also has fish entrees, so HH wouldn't be left eating something he didn't like for dinner.

At the risk of another digression, it has always interested me that HH never really liked steak. Long before I heard of the blood type diet, when we would go out to eat, I would order steak and he would order seafood.

With my steak I chose a baked sweet potato and steamed broccoli. It was delicious. HH had grilled stuffed redfish and broccoli. If we had stopped there, we would have had a very beneficial meal. But HH wanted a dessert. "We used to share a piece of cheesecake on our anniversary," he complained. I answered that a dessert would be fine, but not cheesecake. I think my cheesecake far surpasses restaurant cheesecake. I made it for our son at Christmas, and the memory was still too fresh. We shared an apple cobbler instead. It was really good - way too much sugar, of course, but really good.

Twelve years ago when I was writing Eat Right For Your Type I used to Google (although there was no actual Google at the time; I used Excite) the phrases personalized medicine and personalized nutrition. At the time there were virtually no references. Now they number in the tens of thousands. However, Eat Right For Your Type was among the first books to ever use this concept.

With the The GenoType Diet, I've been instead googling the phrase Intergenerational Medicine and seeing about as much. Mark my words: in ten years you will see this phrase also appearing in the tens if not hundreds of thousands.

I often quote these citations when I lecture. Of course it would be most interesting to eventually learn what the author of the last abstract might consider an enriching experience.

Environmental influences can be inherited even without any mutations in the genes themselves. If genetic mutations are ‘typos' and relatively easy to test for, epigenetic changes are analogous to the formatting of the text (e.g. font, size, and color) and are much less well understood.

• Montague T. A New Way to Inherit Environmental Harm. Synthesis/Regeneration 39 (Winter 2006)

Mother rats exposed to hormone-mimicking chemicals during pregnancy gave birth to four successive generations of male offspring with significantly reduced fertility. Only the first generation of mothers was exposed to a toxin, yet four generations later the toxic effect could still be detected .

• M. Anway, A. Cupp, M. Uzumcu, and M. Skinner, Epigenetic Transgenerational Actions of Endocrine Disruptors and Male Fertility, Science Vol. 308, June 3, 2005, pp. 1466–1469.

Conceivably the cancer you may get today may have been caused by your grandmother's exposure to an industrial poison 50 years ago, even though your grandmother's genes were not changed by the exposure… or the mercury you're eating today in fish may not harm you directly, but may harm your grandchildren. These inherited traits can continue to influence the onset of diseases like diabetes, obesity, mental illness and heart disease, from generation to generation.

• Montague T. A New Way to Inherit Environmental Harm. Synthesis/Regeneration 39 (Winter 2006)

Global decrease in methylation levels is commonly observed in aging cells, as well as in neoplasia (early event.) The causes of this hypomethylation are not known. Contributes to chromosomal instability in cancer and to increased expression of selected affected genes. Unlike defective genes, which are damaged for life, methylated genes can be demethylated. And, methyl tags that are knocked off can be regained via nutrients, drugs, and enriching experiences.

• Asim K. Duttaroy Evolution, Epigenetics, and Maternal Nutrition 2006 Darwin Day Celebration.