That thing with the eggs, sheesh I know what you mean. How long do you reckon until they think they're bad for you again?!
My ire was raised years ago, by the food we ate. My father sold supplies to bakeries, and I got to learn about life. The discussion went as follows.
Dad, why does the ingredients list on this cookie batch not match the ingredients on that one.
Son, people are stupid. Let me tell you about the last ten years. We started out with whole eggs, butter, flour, and potentially peanut dust in our processing center. It was determined that people wanted richer and richer tasting goods, so we initially switched the butter in our goods to hydrogenated vegetable oils, like coconut butter. The public ate it up, until a study came out linking the oils to obesity and heart disease. We immediately changed back to the old butter, sold the cookies as free of the oils, and people ate up the change. They trumpeted that it was good for them, so they could eat more than they used to.
People then got fat, because a dozen cookies getting shoved down a gullet tends to do that. People then cried out for less fat, and less sugar. The first change was to go to egg whites, rather than whole eggs. The proteins still bound, but the cookies were lighter. People didn't have an issue with that, and the yellows were diverted into cheaper staple goods, like bread and animal feed. Next, we introduced a sugar substitute that contained no calories. The eggs may the cookies less smooth, more flaky, and hard to maintain a shelf life on. Artificial sweeteners were linked to cancer, and are actually a diuretic.
The people who ate a half dozen of these new cookies appreciated them as "healthier," so the down-side was tolerable; I say that knowing full well that eventually the frequent bathroom stops after eating them eventually clicked in people's minds. These healthier cookies needed to be smoother, so the trans-fats were introduced in place of the butter. The resulting cookies were smooth again, but still caused....seepage...
Now we come to the last few years. Trans-fats are now known to cause high blood pressure, and as such we switched back to hydrogenated vegetable oils. The oils were better for you than the fats, and the artificial sweeteners were disposed of. Having another couple years of success, people eventually saw more studies linking hydrogenated oils to medical conditions. Out the window they go, and back to butter. People eventually discovered that the price of goods had increased, so they were looking for cost cutting measures. Around this time the pro-egg movement had become big, so people wanted whole eggs back in their products. Thus, our cookies now have exactly the same as they were a decade ago. The only difference is a 40-60% increase in pricing, that is not mirrored in any way by the cost of the components.
TL;DR: 10 years and despite numerous changes we have the same ingredients in cookies, but artificially inflated prices.
This is why I hate journalists reporting "SCIENCE!" without understanding what that word means. Hopefully, somebody chastises these idiots for spreading misinformation. Given their profession, this probably won a bonus check for hits on their site. That is why I get serious about this crap quickly. Without a sufficient amount of condescension these articles will continue to spread scientific illiteracy. That is unacceptable.
is genetic memory not just the same as instinct?
No. Genetic Memory, or more accurately defined by this article as epigenetic gene expression, is not instinct. Instinctual behavior relate to hard-coded behavioral traits that are present in every member of the species, while epigenetic gene expression can effect as little as one member of a species (and their offspring).
Let's compare the two, to understand where differentiation lies. Theoretically, every single cockroach scurries away when exposed to bright lights. This reaction can be observed in roaches who belong to a lineage that hasn't been exposed to intense light in dozens of generations.
On the other hand, you could theoretically expose a group of roaches to sulfur dioxide 10 seconds before delivering a massive electrical shock to them. Continuation of this smell to shock stimuli for their entire lives would (if the epigenetic expression was verifiable) cause the offspring to immediately associate the smell to a shock, and have them react defensively without ever having been shocked before.
Now, the crossroads between these two is interesting. If the epigenetic expression continued on for many generations there may be an adaptation (yay evolution), which favors certain genes for reproduction that are better suited to detecting these smells. In enough generations the faculties to detect this stimuli may evolve as an instinctual behavior
Of course, all of this is predicated upon the epigenetic gene expression potentially being directly related to the stimuli progenitors experienced. This is not particularly plausible given the mixed results of the study, so take from that what you will.