Study Overweight Parents Equally Obese Children?

Overweight parents - overweight children? Study confirms context
Children of overweight parents significantly more often develop too high a body weight. In obesity, the estimated proportion of familial factors was even over 50 percent, according to a study by the University of Sussex in the UK.

The scientists had evaluated data from 100,000 adolescents aged 5 to 18 years and their parents. The subjects came from Great Britain, USA, China, Indonesia, Spain and Mexico. Among other things, the study determined the body mass index (BMI) of the subjects. In children and adolescents, the normal body fat percentage changes constantly. Therefore, weight is ranked by standard curves depending on age and gender.

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The evaluation of the data showed that the higher the body weight of the child, the stronger the parental influence. This association was detectable across countries, although nations differed greatly in their economic development, nutritional patterns and the proportion of obese people in the population. In a rather thin child, 10 percent of the BMI was due to the maternal and 10 percent to the paternal BMI, while it was just under 30 percent per parent in an obese child.

Obviously overweight is passed on from generation to generation. There seems to be a clear correlation between familial factors and body weight, the authors write in the journal Economics and Human Biology. Not surprisingly, long-term weight loss is difficult to achieve in obese children. However, the emergence of obesity is a multi-layered phenomenon. The parental influence is due to genetic factors, but also to the diet and lifestyle in the family. These include, for example, sports activities and the time in front of the TV or the computer. Whether the familial environment or genetics is more important in the development of obesity is not conclusively clarified. Heike Kreutz, bzfe