Anacortes Senior College

Are you a result of what your grandparents ate in the 1930-40’s? Are your grandchildren marked by the same history or another one marked by your 1960s nutritional options? Despite dietary intake occupying a significant role in past studies of human evolution, advances in scientific knowledge now provide updated studies discrediting commonly held dietary beliefs based upon previous biases in the 1960s through the 1980s. For instance, the 1950-60 diet- heart hypothesis, which resulted in restricting eggs, cholesterol and fats while recommending greater intake of margarines, is now correlated with increased cancer prevalence and metabolic disorders such as obesity – and problems with heart disease. Oops.

Ecology is defined as the scientific study of relationships that living organisms have with each other and with their natural environment. In the case of humans, it also includes adaptation to the ever-changing world with which we are constantly messing. To survive, we must continually adapt to problems and changes. To adapt and evolve, we must have variation in cultural, functional physiology, and genetics. Our story of adaptation and survival is written in the language of our genes and dependent upon epigenetic mechanisms to create much of the diversity among cells. Many of our phenotypic traits are derived from combined effects of genes and environment. Epigenetic mechanisms archive information from environmental factors to play a profound role influencing human reproduction, variation in growth and development, adaptive capacity, and survival. Nutrition remains the most significant environmental determinant affecting biological processes, epigenetic signaling and gene expression.

I hope to whet your appetite to explore lessons in research, science, nutrition, and heredity through a biocultural study of population variation. We will begin with the basics and discuss science in “English.” No prerequisites for this class.

Instructor: MJ Mosher, BSN, MA, PhD

MJ blends experience from diverse professional careers. She served as a clinical nurse in Denver, as a researcher through a Postdoctoral Fellowship at National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, University of North Carolina, and as a professor in anthropological genetics and nutrition at Western Washington University. She served as principal investigator in population studies with the Buryat of Siberia and Mennonite of Central Kansas, and additionally participating in studies with the Russian Old Believers in Oregon and indigenous populations of the Amazonian region of northern Peru.  All studies examined the relationships among diet, genetics/epigenetics and biomarkers of energy balance, obesity, and cholesterol.

MJ believes that teaching is a two-way experience, with teacher and students (or study participants) learning from each other.