While the original work in this field focused on maternal undernutrition as a source of stress for the developing baby, animal and human data suggest that exposure to a maternal diet that is calorically "sufficient" but of low-quality foods, such as the consumption of increasingly processed foods by Western societies, can result in similar in-utero programing and predisposition to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in offspring. Especially concerning about these findings is the implication that reversal of these effects will take generations to realize. "Transgenerational nutritional flow" occurs because the eggs that will be fertilized to form babies in women of child-bearing age today began development in the ovaries of their mothers when their mothers were themselves in their grandmothers' womb. Thus the grandmother not only provided for the health of her own eggs, which became the mother, but also supplied the nutrients for the reproductive organs (including ovaries) in the mother as she developed from fetus to baby, thereby influencing the programming of her future grandchildren. Thus, we can now link the health status of the current citizens of Oregon with generational nutritional flow over the past century. Fortunately, evidence shows that improving the environment of mothers-to-be by lowering stress and providing access to healthier foods can reverse many of the adverse effects that are programmed in early life, though the full benefits of these efforts will take generations to realize.