Oxidative Costs and Antioxidant Rewards of Nutrition

What you eat, when you eat, and where you eat have dramatic effects on many aspects of an individual life. Nutrition is a source of a number of substances that can increase the organismal resistance to oxidative stress. However, nutrition can also generate oxidative stress and trigger a cascade of molecular events that can disrupt cellular oxidative status. As a consequence, oxidative stress has also likely major implications for the evolution of foraging ecology and the strategies of maternal allocation of nutrients and antioxidants to their offspring. In this chapter, I have examined (i) the role that oxidative stress might have played in the evolution of foraging strategies and food selection, (ii) the links between diet and organismal resistance to oxidative stress, and (iii) the many ways through which mothers can shape offspring physiology through transfer of dietary antioxidants from them to their offspring.