Fit Parents Have Thin Children

According to the researchers, fit parents can often pass on to their children special genes that will make them slim, too. The probability of a child being born thin is three times bigger in such a family.

The scientists have been studying the height and weight of the parents and children from 7000 families for 5 years. The analysis of Body Mass Index (BMI) has shown that when both parents have a lower index, the probability that the child will be thin is 16.2%. But in the cases when the index was higher, the probability of being fit was only 7.8%.

The index of thin children was about 18.5 or lower, though normally the index should be 18.5 – 24.9. If the index ranges from 25 to 29.9, the child is overweight, and in the cases when the BMI exceeds 30, one can diagnose obesity.

By the way, when both parents were overweight, the child was thin in only 5.3% of cases, and if they were obese, only 2.5% of the children were slim.

The head of the research, Dr Katrina Whitaker from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London admits that the researchers had already been discussing the connection between the parents’ weight and their children’s cases of overweight before this study. But thin children and their parents had never been in the focus of their attention.

It is well known that all genes have two versions called alleles. Most likely, the genes responsible for weight also exist in two versions: the first one is associated with low weight, and the second one – with obesity. Accordingly, fit parents have more “skinny allele genes” which they can pass on to their children.

Source of the image: Photl.