Can experiences of parents affect future children? new studies1 suggest that they can: early life experiences of parents appear to cause permanent changes in sperm and eggs. in one study, some male rats were fed a high-fat diet with of calories from fat (a typical american diet), while others were fed a normal healthy rat diet. not surprisingly, the rats fed the high-fat diet were far more likely than the normal-diet rats to develop metabolic syndrome (characterized by such things as excess weight, excess fat, insulin resistance, and glucose intolerance.) what surprised the scientists was that the daughters of these rats were also far more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than the daughters of rats fed healthy diets. none of the daughters and none of the mothers ate a high-fat diet and the fathers did not have any contact with the daughters. the high-fat diet of the fathers appeared to cause negative effects for their daughters. one variable is whether or not the male was fed a high-fat diet or a normal diet and another variable is whether or not the daughters developed metabolic syndrome.