A team of researchers from Britain's Medical Research Council makes its way through thickets of forest and along mangrove-lined wetlands in the small sliver of a country called Gambia, located along Africa's Atlantic coast. These researchers are not here to enjoy the country's beautiful beaches, small wildlife parks or world-class bird-watching but are on a mission to check in with the people in a small village in Keneba. The MRC has been collecting data on births, marriages and deaths in Keneba since the 1940s, and it has come upon a discovery that could have far-reaching implications for us all. In this part of Gambia, when a child is conceived makes a huge difference in relation to the child's chances of dying prematurely. For children conceived in January and born in September, researchers have found that as adults, these individuals are seven times likelier to die in any given year than people conceived in September and born in June.

The reason for this has nothing to do with astrology or happenstance. It has everything to do with the weather and with what the parents were eating at the time of conception. Gambia has an unusual but very stable weather pattern. July to November is rainy season. The other months are generally dry.

During the dry season, people have plenty of couscous and rice. During the rainy season, a time known as "the hungry months," there are fewer calories around, but because of all the rain, there are a lot of leafy green vegetables to eat. Come to find, the amount of leafy green vegetables the mother (and possibly the father) is eating around the time of conception can have a big impact on the rest of the life of her offspring. What these researchers have found is that until the age of 15, there's no discernible difference with the children. After that, the impact of what the mother was eating at the time of conception becomes both profound and shocking.

Armed with this knowledge, it stands to reason that if you are thinking of having a baby, then eating lots of leafy green vegetables — which are rich in folate, a water-soluble B vitamin — is a good idea.

If you need further convincing that a mother's diet during pregnancy can have long and lasting effects on the health of her child, consider the findings of another long-term and well-known study. At the end of World War II, the Germans imposed a blockade on parts of the Netherlands. By the time it was lifted, winter had begun, and it was almost impossible to get food in. According to a BBC report by correspondent Michael Mosley, for months many people had to live on starvation diets. Thousands of people died during this famine.

After the Allies liberated Europe, a study of the Dutch famine was commissioned. The purpose was to see what would happen over time to the babies of the pregnant women caught up in the famine.

What researchers discovered is that the offspring of women pregnant at the time of the famine were twice as likely to develop heart disease in later life. They were also far more prone to obesity, diabetes, cancer and stress-related illnesses. The study went on to suggest that improving the diet of pregnant women improves not only the lives of children but also those of following generations.

The sad truth is that these compelling findings from the past are not likely to change many habits in our present world — no matter how dramatic and conclusive they may be. We seem hard-wired to resist changes to established eating practices, with a capacity to disregard or dismiss troubling details of consequences.

This fact is driven home by the sobering finding of a study published this month in the medical journal The Lancet. An international consortium of researchers working on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study examined data on 79 risk factors, from smoking and drinking soda to air pollution and unsafe water, in 188 countries between 1990 and 2013. These researchers found that the biggest causes of death around the world today are things that are highly fixable. Poor diet, high blood pressure, high body mass and smoking are the top risk factors for deaths around the world. All are avoidable.

It was further revealed that the greatest cumulative impact on health comes from poor diet, with a staggering combination of 14 dietary risk factors contributing to the highest number of deaths worldwide. This represents a significant shift from the 1990s. Childhood under-nutrition and unsafe water sources have dropped off the global top 10 list of contributors to poor health, replaced by dietary risks and high blood pressure.

There is an army of facts standing behind these latest findings. The facts tell us that eating a salt-, sugar- and fat-laden diet is related to having high blood pressure and being obese, which in turn can lead to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

The World Health Organization has called for the reduction of salt consumption and named it as a key factor in high blood pressure. The authors of the study in The Lancet call for a stronger and more coherent global response to this worldwide health threat.

In the meantime, it's clear that we are doing it to ourselves, with a big assist from the marketers and makers of food that could quite literally kill us.

Write to Chuck Norris ([email protected]) with your questions about health and fitness. Follow Chuck Norris through his official social media sites, on Twitter @chucknorris and Facebook's "Official Chuck Norris Page." He blogs at http://chucknorrisnews.blogspot.com. To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.