Whats The Chance My Child Will Be Overweight?

The odds that a child will be overweight depends upon the status of his parents. If one parent is overweight the odds that he will be overweight or obese is 50%. If both parents are overweight, however, the odds that a child will be overweight is as much as 80%. Things are not as bleak when you look at the other end. If two parents are thin throughout their adult life the odds that one of their offspring will be overweight is seven or 8% or less.

Twin studies from Denmark reveal important lesions about how genetics and environment interact. When identical twins whose birth parents were both obese and then separate and adopted by either thin or fat families, the weight of each twin was different. The twin adopted by a thin family tends to have greater weight than his thin step the siblings, but less weight than his twin that might have been adopted by an obese family. This proves whether you kids will become overweight depends upon you genes and the environment. It seems to say that genes decide only partially that a child will obese, you need an obeseogenic environment as well. No hard to find in this country.

So if you are one of the 68% of Americans overweight, there is not much you do to your genes. You can, however, change the food environment of the family including eliminating trips to fast food restaurants, stop buy chips, cookie and cakes and most of all switching from sugar laden sodas and juices to no sugar beverages.

Perhaps this has to do with genetic factors, but, it has to do with the family's sedentary lifestyle and eating habits as well. Heredity can influence such factors as one's response to overfeeding, one's degree of fatness, as well as the way fat is distributed in one's body. Recent studies have also established that babies born to overweight mothers tend to be less active and gain more weight in early infancy due to some apparently internal desire to conserve energy. It's well known there are specific genetic defects that cause obesity. When a single gene or chromosome is involved it's called monogenic obesity. Defects in single genes involving leptin, leptin receptor and melancortin-4 receptor are major cause of obesity occurring at a very young age. These specific genetic defects are very rare as to make of little consequences other than helping our understanding of the problem.

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