But which parent?
Two articles from the UK’s Telegraph.
Fat Women Have Fat Daughters. No surprises there. Whether being fat is genetic or (my God, surely not!) related to diet and activity, what your mum does is going to have a significant influence. So why is this worth a headline?
What makes it interesting is that the same study found that fat fathers have fat sons, but that a child’s obesity was not correlated to the weight of the opposite sex parent.
Second headline: Diabetic Fathers With Poor Diets More Likely to Pass Condition to Daughters. Ah, what? Not the clearest headline in the history of journalism. But possibly one of the dumbest.
The study that was the basis for this article was a study of rats.
Male rats fed a high fat diet developed obesity and glucose intolerance. When those male rats were mated with normal females the female offspring were more likely develop impaired glucose tolerance and insulin secretion as they grew up.
My first thought on reaidng this was ‘Maybe that Lysenko guy was onto something after all.’ But I doubt it.
But really? A few rats are force fed fatty diets and their female offspring are marginally more likely to develop diabetes, and this means human fathers who eat too many chips are going to have diabetic daughters?
No. Being fat is your fault. The only way to stop being fat is to eat less and do more. Having pineapple enemas won’t do it, no matter what Britney Spears says.
But being diabetic probably isn’t anyone’s fault.
A little part of me is sympathetic to, say, the poor family with no backyard and “fat” offspring. And I can also see why a protective mother wouldn’t want her kids on the streets in a high crime area.
But then another part of me thinks that these chubby children won’t even be able to run from criminals. Are boot camps the answer? I don’t know. Perhaps we should just stick to jails with fatty food menus.