Overweight parents = overweight kids?

First off, children "inherited" their parents body types and metabolism. If parents were big-boned, heavy-weight or had a hard time loosing weight (and vice versa), unfortunately children will be dealing with the same problems.

When parents are active and eat healthy, they usually enforce these rules upon the children themselves. I think there is a link between parent's weight and children's weight, but that doesn't mean a fat parent = fat kids. It's hard for adults to stay in shape and it's hard for mom's to loose their baby fat. An 8-year-old usually doesn't have to worry about that.

I haven't seen studies, but I believe this to be true. If the parents aren't eating properly and are overweight, well, the kids are eating the same foods generally. If the parents are thin and eat healthy, their kids most likely will too and stay thin as well. Of course I've seen the opposite too where heavy folks have thin kids and thin parents have overweight children, but I believe for the most part it's the first way.

My mom was obese and I'm no where near obese! I could see how sometimes it would be like that, if the mother or father doesn't care about their health, then the child may go down the same path. Like if mommy doesn't want to cook and they always go out for dinner, then it could happen very easily.

But then there are children ( like me as a child and even more now) see issues with this, when you watch that parent get sick from being overweight, see the hospital trips and watching as the go into diabetic shock, because they cant Control their weight or what they eat. you see a different life for your self. I don't want to be like that. I want to live a full healthy life, and i realized this as a young child.

I wouldn't eat junk food ( except 5 cents candy ...my one weakness) but i always ate healthy, we didn't have the money for junk like McDonald's and i think that helped. I think that this study is sort of on track but like any other study its not the same for everyone, there are always exceptions! but good question!

As a general idea, there probably is some sort of a correlation between overweight parents and overweight kids. If you really think about it, the parents have food in the house that is unhealthy and causes them to be overweight, so the kids can get ahold of it. They learn from their parents, and that includes eating habits. You have to think about the kind of food that parents give their kids for lunch or the fact that they probably just make one dinner for the whole family. If they make one unhealthy dinner and the kid is too young to make their own healthy food, they eat the unhealthy meal as well. I'm sure there is a variable when it comes to disorders or kids who are in every activity there is and kids who eat a lot of unhealthy food and do not exercise, but for the most part, kids don't do their own grocery shopping and eating heaps of unhealthy crap is usually a learned behavior.

Definitely due to their lifestyle. Kids pick up on example, if parents eat unhealthy food the child will do the same because they don't know better. If you're brought up with a habit it's hard to leave it. But sometimes the kids grow up and change lol.

My in-laws are obese to the point it threatens their health. My husband and his brother are very skinny and work out a lot in what I suspect is a resolve not to end up like their parents.

Yes, statistically kids will emulate the eating habits of their parents because it's how they were raised but they can make a conscious decision to change their habits when they are older.

Well it's the parents who decide what the kids eat so it does make sense, plus kids will just think eating junk is normal.

For the most part chubby kids do have overweight parents but I've seen it all kinds of ways.

I have some mom friends who are themselves quite fat and they are very particular about what their kids eat because they don't want their children to struggle with weight. I have some mom friends who are fat and they fix the sorts of foods that made them fat for the entire family and so, surprise surprise, their kids are fat. My grandmother was one of those people who could eat whatever she wanted and stay rail thin and her children were not so lucky. So she was thin and all of her kids were fat. Not get your own TLC special fat, but certainly unhealthy.

The plural of anecdote is not data. The small number of people any of us will come across in our life times isn't enough to make up a study.

Not true. Whether a person is thin or fat depends on a lot of things. Genetics, environment, eating and exercise habits. I am a thin person and my sister is fat, both due to genetics. We both have good eating habits and exercise daily, but our weights either remained unchanged or only change slightly.

"monkey see, monkey do"

if you have parents with bad habits (like bad eating habits, or doing drugs) then it's very likely that the kids will pick up the same habits. It's human nature to mirror other people's actions, especially parents. But not all kids mimic their parents.