Study shows you can blame your parents for your middle-age spread

Obesity is passed down even into midlife

MIDDLE-AGED adults are six times more likely to be obese if both their parents were at that stage of their lives, a study suggests.

Growing evidence has shown that children of obese parents are likely to follow the same path and grow up to be overweight themselves.

But until now, the research has not tracked whether the trait – thought to be down to a combination of environment and genetics – lasted well into adulthood.

Analysis of height and weight data, involving more than 2,000 people, showed a strong link between parents’ body mass index when aged between 40 and 59 years old and that of their children at the same age.

Experts found even having one obese parent tripled the risk over having non-obese parents.

Mari Mikkelsen, of the University of Tromso in Norway, said: ‘Genes play an important role by affecting our susceptibility to weight gain and influence how we respond to obesogenic environments in which it can be easy to eat unhealthily. Some studies also speculate that children tend to develop similar dietary and exercise habits to their parents when living together, resulting in a similar BMI status.

‘Obesity in childhood, and especially in adolescence, tends to follow the individual into early adulthood and so we suspected it would also follow them into middle age. We found that this is indeed the case. Children whose parents lived with obesity are much more likely to be living with obesity themselves when they are in their 40s and 50s, long after they have left home.’

When both parents were obese in middle age, their children had six times higher odds of living with obesity themselves when they reached the same stage than adults with both parents in the normal weight range.

When only the mother was obese, the odds were 3.44 times higher, and if only the father was obese the odds were 3.74 times higher, according to the research, which is to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, Italy.

Researchers admitted it could not be established whether this phenomenon was a result of ‘fat’ genes, environment, or a combination of the two.

But Ms Mikkelsen said: ‘Whatever the explanation, it underlines the importance of treating and preventing obesity, which contributes significantly to ill health.’

She added that it ‘also lays the foundation for research into factors that influence the intergenerational transmission of obesity and that can be targeted to prevent offspring from spending their whole life affected by obesity’.

‘Genes play an important role’