During the five days in between, children's normal diets were mostly substituted for organic foods.
The researchers then gave the rats normal diets for the remainder of gestation.
Those on normal diets, like Matthias, are beginning to show signs of advancing age similar to those seen in humans.
Another group of men with heart disease continued their normal diets.
Mr. Chen said tests over the last year had shown no significant differences in research that covers studies like the sperm count and the liver weight of rats fed modified foods against those on normal diets.
The pancreases and muscles of the pups born to restricted-diet mothers were much smaller than those of pups born to mothers on normal diets.
In particular, genes associated with fat and cholesterol synthesis were much more active in the offspring of fathers who had been fed low-protein diets than in those sired by males who had been on normal diets.
But now two studies involving thousands of people randomly assigned to eat either high-fiber diets or their normal diets failed to find that the high-fiber diets protected against polyps, which are tiny lumps in the colon that precede many colon cancers.
