The shame is, I think there is some possible scientific merit in the concept, but it has been almost completely discredited by Lysenko. Anyone who investigages the possibility that organisms can alter their genetics within their lifetime, in response to environmental or other changes, and then pass those changes to offspring is immediately compared to Lysenko. But such imprinting is a logical explanation for genetically-imprinted behavior, and also such an explanation takes a lot of the randomness out of many evolutionary theories.
Or Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the 18th/19th centuries, or Paul Kammerer in the 20th.
Arthur Koestler chronicles the rise and fall of the latter in The Case of the Midwife Toad.
If you listen to the program, they state that a famine can affect the height of the grandchildren. So it’s not quite as discredited as you make it out to be.
Search for epigenetics.