Honey bees. Most people don’t realize that not only are they essential to the growth of our food but they are also a perfect example on how food helps to determine destiny. The fertilized egg can either become a queen or a worker bee depending on how long it’s fed royal jelly, making this a great insight into how our environment (which includes the foods we eat) can change genetics. This is called epigenetics.
In the colony, the nurse bees feed all of the eggs with royal jelly up to three days then they stop. From that point, they decide who will continue receiving the nutrient and become a potential queen. All of those other bees will become workers that will possibly live for several weeks while the queen can live up to about five years. All because of what they ate or didn’t eat.
It’s quite fascinating. I had a conversation with someone the other day that is “very knowledgable” in general subjects and they argued that it doesn’t matter what you eat because you can’t control what your genes do. Wrong. You can’t control everything but your environment is the light switch to your internal wiring. The choice of food that you put into your body is part of your environment that you CAN control. It’s the idea that if you can lessen the chances of certain genetic markers getting “turned on” by choosing less harmful foods, why not choose them?
If you want to read more about bees and their queens, check out this site: https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/what-it-takes-make-queen-bee
If you want to read more about epigenetics and the food you choose, check out this site: https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/sponsored/nestle/how-diet-can-change-your-dna/
Hart Health 