{"id":3869,"date":"2012-10-15T13:45:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T18:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=3869"},"modified":"2012-10-15T21:11:29","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T02:11:29","slug":"pottengers-cats-an-early-window-on-epigenetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2012\/10\/15\/pottengers-cats-an-early-window-on-epigenetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Pottenger’s Cats – an early window on epigenetics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pottenger's<\/a>Dr. Francis M. Pottenger was a physician<\/a> who conducted studies on cats during the 1930s and 1940s.\u00a0 His work was initially devoted to developing adrenal gland extract hormones to treat his sanatorium patients who had respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, asthma, and allergies.\u00a0 His study grew so large that the number of cats exceeded his supply of leftover food at his sanatorium, so he obtained supplies of raw meat scraps from local butchers.\u00a0 Soon he noticed that the health of the cats being fed the raw meat scraps was superior to the cats eating the standard cooked meat leftovers from the sanatorium. His discovery led to a ten-year cat study that examined the nutritional effects of cooked meat and milk versus raw meat and milk on several generations of cats.\u00a0 The research is described in Pottenger’s Cats: A Study in Nutrition<\/a><\/em> by Francis M. Pottenger, MD.<\/p>\n

Dr. Pottenger\u2019s cat study teaches us that our diet can have a significant impact on not only our own health but also the health of our children and grandchildren.\u00a0 Dr. Pottenger discovered that feeding a deficient diet to cats for several generations resulted in increasingly poor health and function in each generation until by the third generation the cats were no longer able to reproduce.\u00a0 Allergy symptoms were among the first symptoms in the kittens born to the first deficient generation of cats.\u00a0 By the third generation almost 100% of the kittens had allergy symptoms.\u00a0 Dr. Pottenger\u2019s research also showed that the health of the cats could be recovered if the diet were returned to a healthy one by the second generation; however, even then it took four generations for some of the cats to show no symptoms of allergies.\u00a0 The deficiency in Dr. Pottenger\u2019s cats\u2019 diet was apparently caused by heating and\/or processing the meat and milk fed to the cats.\u00a0 The heating and processing of the food may have destroyed or damaged essential nutrients needed by the cats to be completely healthy.\u00a0 Cats that were fed the most processed foods were the most damaged.\u00a0 Although cats are not perhaps the most relevant study animal for application to human biology, there are still important lessons to be learned here about the importance of nutrition on health.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend reading all of Pottenger’s Cats<\/em> to fully understand the importance of nutrition on health through multiple generations.\u00a0 The book is listed on Real Food Houston’s Recommended Reading<\/a> page.\u00a0 The book may be purchased through the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This summary is largely taken from a homework assignment for my course work with the Nutritional Therapy Association<\/a>.\u00a0 I talked about my plans to become a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner in Why I do what I do!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Francis M. Pottenger was a physician who conducted studies on cats during the 1930s and 1940s.\u00a0 His work was initially devoted to developing adrenal gland extract hormones to treat his sanatorium patients who had respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,172,276],"tags":[189,277,61,174,24],"class_list":["post-3869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-nutrition","category-raw-food","tag-epigenetics","tag-francis-pottenger","tag-healthy-foods","tag-nutrition-2","tag-raw-milk-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-10p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3869"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3891,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions\/3891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}