Obesity can be inherited from your parents.We inherit not merely our likes and dislikes but also our bodily structure from our parents.
Highlights
- Obesity or excessive fat accumulation is the root cause of diabetes, heart disease, respiratory problems.
- There is a 40% chance for obesity to be passed on from a parent to a child.
- A child's BMI is, on average, 20 percent due to the mother and 20 percent due to the father.
- The parental effect is more than double for the most obese children as compared to what it is for the thinnest children.
The parental effect was found to be the lowest for the thinnest child, as opposed to being the highest for the most obese child. For the thinnest child their BMI is 10 percent due to their mother and 10 percent due to their father, whereas, for the fattest child this transmission is closer to 30 percent due to each parent.
Lead author of the study, Professor Peter Dolton, University of Sussex, Britain said, "This shows that the children of obese parents are much more likely to be obese themselves when they grow up - the parental effect is more than double for the most obese children as compared to what it is for the thinnest children."
Each child's BMI is, on average, 20 percent due to the mother and 20 percent due to the father.
Professor Dolton noted, "These findings have far-reaching consequences for the health of the world's children. They should make us rethink the extent to which obesity is the result of family factors, and our genetic inheritance, rather than decisions made by us as individuals."