Baby's Weight Could Be From Genes

Childhood obesity continues to rise. In an effort to combat this epidemic, researchers from King’s College London and UCL conducted a study to help determine possible causes. The study suggests that a child’s natural body weight influences the way their parents feed them. This differs from the past belief that a child’s weight is a reflection of how a parent feeds the child.

Saskia Selzam from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London said, “We found that parents whose children were genetically predisposed to have a lower weight were more pressuring of them to eat, and those parents whose children were genetically predisposed to have a higher weight were more restrictive over how much and what they were allowed to eat.”

Learn more about this study that included data from approximately 4,500 twin pairs here.