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Your dad bod could raise your kids’ risk for obesity and disease. You’ve probably heard of the “dad bod.” It’s the body shape of a guy who’s not super fat, but not in particularly good shape, either. It’s gotten a friendly rebrand over the past decade with articles saying that some women prefer the soft dad bod over a super shredded physique. But a new review out of UC Irvine, published in Current Obesity Reports, complicates the dad bod’s innocuous reputation. We usually talk about a mom’s health before and during pregnancy shaping outcomes for her future kid, but researchers found that dad’s health plays a role too, and earlier than you’d think. A father’s weight and habits before conception can change his sperm quality and the epigenetic markers that switch on early in a child’s development and influence their metabolism, appetite, and disease risk down the road. Obesity, it turns out, is estimated to be 40 to 70 percent heritable. The encouraging part is that a lot of it looks reversible. Drop the weight, clean up your habits, and the markers you pass on improve. If you’re planning on becoming a dad soon, take this as a nudge to start eating better and hitting the gym.
In Defense of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen. We had Rowan Jacobsen on the podcast two years ago to talk about the health benefits of sunlight, and his new book dives even deeper into the research-backed evidence of just how good it is for us. His argument is that we’ve spent decades living under what he calls a “zero-sun” policy: slather on sunscreen, dodge the sun whenever you can, and take a vitamin D pill to cover the difference. And he makes a strong case that we’ve got it mostly backwards. Yes, too much sun causes skin cancer, but skin cancer kills relatively few people, and the cost of avoiding the sun shows up everywhere else, like high blood pressure, depression, poor sleep, autoimmune disease, and even all-cause mortality. Ever since I went down this rabbit hole myself several summers ago, I’ve tried to get a little sun daily. It feels good, man. Jacobsen boils his advice down to seven words: Get sun. Not too much. Go outside. The book releases to the public next week.
Douk-Douk Folding Knife. I’ve had one of these in my pocket knife arsenal for years. It’s a simple folding knife with a single blade that tucks into a housing of stamped steel. The simplicity is exactly what I like about it. Douk-Douk has an interesting history. It’s been made by the Cognet family in Thiers, France, since 1929. Gaston Cognet designed it for France’s Pacific colonies. It didn’t take off there, but became the unofficial national pocketknife of Algeria instead. It’s a good beater knife to have around for everyday knife needs.
The Endless Summer. My dad surfed in Corpus Christi as a teenager. The surfing isn’t great in the Gulf of Mexico, but it was a big part of his young life. He’d watch The Endless Summer from time to time when I was a kid to re-live his glory days. This 1966 Bruce Brown documentary is about two guys chasing summer around the world so they never run out of waves. It’s an incredibly relaxing movie to watch. I’ve never surfed, but I come back to this movie every few summers because it gives me a peek into a subculture — and a part of my dad’s life — that I don’t know much about.
On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published The Four Faces of Envy and Sunday Firesides: Exercise, Man’s Most Faithful Companion.
Quote of the Week
What is difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength requisite for accomplishing particular objects; a mere notice of the necessity for exertion; a bugbear to children and fools; only a stimulus to men.
—Samuel Warren
This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.