Healthy Beginnings Start with Both Parents: The Emerging Science of Paternal Nutrition with Dr. Kozeta Miliku

There is a rapidly evolving area of nutrition research that is changing how we think about preconception health. Conversations about pregnancy nutrition have traditionally focused on mothers, however, growing evidence suggests that a father's nutrition and lifestyle before conception may also influence fertility, pregnancy outcomes, and the long-term health of his children.

Dr. Kozeta Miliku is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her research examines how nutrition during critical periods of development, from preconception through childhood and adolescence, shapes lifelong cardiometabolic health. A major focus of her research is understanding the role of paternal nutrition and health before conception and expanding the traditional maternal-focused framework of preconception health toward one that recognizes the contributions of both parents.

Dr. Miliku is also the Clinical Science Officer of the CHILD Cohort Study, one of Canada’s largest prospective birth cohort studies. She trained as a physician at the Medical University of Tirana in Albania and received her PhD in Clinical Epidemiology from Erasmus University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Her research brings together nutrition, epidemiology, and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease framework to identify opportunities for preventing chronic disease as early as possible in the life course.

In this episode, Dr. Miliku discusses the emerging science of paternal nutrition: why fathers contribute more than DNA, what we know about the potential biological pathways linking paternal health to offspring health, where important gaps in the evidence remain, and why the future of preconception care may need to include both parents.