London, July 13: Like father, like son. And, like mother, like daughter. Yes, obesity is linked to same-sex parent, say researchers.
A new study by the Plymouth’s Peninsula Medical School has revealed a strong link in obesity between fathers and sons as well as mothers and daughters — but not across the gender divide, the ‘International Journal of Obesity’ reported.
According to the researchers, it’s “highly unlikely” that genetics is playing a role in the findings as it would be unusual for them to influence children along gender lines.
Instead, they have claimed it was probably because of some form of “behavioural sympathy” where daughters copy the lifestyles of their mothers and sons their fathers.
The team has based it findings on an analysis of the study involving 226 families — it found obese mothers were 10 times more likely to have obese daughters. And for fathers and sons, there was a six-fold rise. But in both cases children of the opposite sex were not affected.
However, the researchers said the assumption ignored the fact that eight in 10 obese adults were not severely overweight when they were children. In fact, they said their findings suggested the opposite was true — that obese adults led to obese children.
In fact, in their study, the researchers found that 41 per cent of the eight-year-old daughters of obese mothers were obese, compared to 4 percent of girls with normal-weight mothers. There was no difference in the proportion for boys.
For boys, 18 percent of the group with obese fathers were also obese, compared to just 3 percent for those with normal-weight fathers. Again, there was no difference in the proportion for girls.
–Agencies