My husband and I are back from spending a weekend with our Darling Daughter. It was Homecoming where she goes to college. All of the activities gave me many opportunities to observe people and their eating habits. It revived an issue I had when the GenoType Diet first came out.

There was an emphasis on how life in the womb impacted the genes of the growing baby. Here is a quote, “The Gatherer's motto — Whoever dies with the most wins — stems from a lack of food in the womb. By making food a top priority, you are able to ensure that you'll always have enough in times of scarcity. But watch out — in our plentiful times you can easily put on excess weight because of overeating.” One example was that a thin mother would produce a baby with thrifty genes – in other words a chubby baby. There was a study of women in a European country in World War II that was used to prove the theory. My interpretation was that the opposite would also have to be true. An over weight mother, consuming more than enough calories, would produce a child without thrifty genes who would grow up thin.

All I can say is that when I observe people, I don’t find that to be true. This weekend as I watched families together I didn’t see skinny parents with fat kids and fat parents with skinny kids. For the most part if mom and dad are thin, the kids are thin. If mom and dad are round, they have round kids.

I can’t say whether this is genetic – in other words whether the tendency to be fat or thin is built into the cells of the children – or whether it is behavioral – thin parents eat a certain way and exercise a certain way and those behaviors are picked up by their offspring. What I do know is that as we walked around campus, I rarely saw a thin mom with an overweight child.

If the idea of thrifty genes was universally true, one place it could be observed today would be in African countries plagued by famine. However, our church has been involved in work with several African orphanages. Some of the orphans come to the US to sing and speak in order to raise funds to keep the orphanages going. These kids were born to poverty stricken, starving mothers. Yet when they are moved to an environment were they get plenty to eat, and even when they visit the US where there is an abundance of food, they are not overweight.

I was pleased with how much good food is available in this college town. We ate one meal at an Arbys – which used to serve nothing but beef for Type Os and nothing at all for Type As. My husband had a remarkably healthy chicken sandwich, and I had a Martha’s Vineyard salad with chicken, apples, and cranberries. Another meal was at a Chinese restaurant where they were happy to adjust the meals for our blood types. Sunday lunch was at a restaurant that had a great variety of fresh vegetables.

There is a grocery store across the street from campus where DD can buy almost everything she needs to supplement the dorm cafeteria food. She says the fresh fruit prices are even better than the prices at home. Now that’s my idea of thrifty.