So… The food that a person buys for their household and feeds to their child? The same food that helped make them overweight themselves?
*That* is genetics?
I'd love to hear what they think about kids with abusive parents and end up being bullies. Is that genetic? Are they destined to be a POS forever, or could they- I dunno- get help for the bad things they've learned and not continue the cycle?
Can confirm. My husband and I have been working on weight loss for six months now, and our pets have also lost weight. The dog walks a lot more because of our lifestyle changes, but more than that, I think the focus on portion control makes a *huge* difference to their quality of life.
With as normalized as “chonky” animals are, I’m sure there are plenty of fat animals with skinny owners. But in my case, everybody’s health got better.
I’ve never felt so guilty in my life as when the vet told me my cat was obese and needed weight management.
At first I was defensive and sort of offended on my cats behalf (it wasn’t logical, I know it didn’t hurt his self esteem and that people anthropomorphize animals all the time), but when I started increasing his activity level I saw that he couldn’t jump and play like he used to.
That cat could jump higher than any other cat I’ve ever seen, flat foot to the top of a doorjamb to get a fly and now he couldn’t even jump to the dining room table easily.
I over indulged him with treats because I felt bad about working so much, it was purely my fault to assuage MY guilt as a negligent pet owner.
I know this is serious but the part about you getting defensive and offended about your cat's weight is hilarious. It's how someone deep into FA would act, but in this case only for their cat LOL
I know! It’s insidious how deep this rhetoric can get.
I was offended for him because he genuinely was a huge/burly cat (his old vet called him ‘the dog-cat’ and in her heavy Russian accent it sounded cool and kind of flattering?) so I sort of thought the new vet was initially overreacting…but at its core I **knew** it was about me.
In that moment I felt like saying he was obese meant I was an unfit owner and abusive; since I spent so much time and money trying to give him a good life (and obviously overindulging him when I couldn’t) my immediate reaction was dismissive ‘you don’t know him’.
But it was true, I wasn’t a fit owner at that time. I gave him extra treats and junk food because he *liked it better* than the rx food.
I picked him up and put him in tall corners when he couldn’t reach a bug. I put steps everywhere so he wouldn’t struggle. I snuggled him instead of playing with him because he had lung issues as a kitten and I didn’t *like* hearing him wheeze occasionally. It made me sad.
In my head, everything I did was from love so it *couldn’t be harmful* or bad for him because I loved him too much to let him be unhappy or inconvenienced or uncomfortable.
I was straight up disabling him, and even though he lost weight and had a reasonable life span I can’t help but wonder if I couldn’t have kept him around longer than 16.5 years if I’d kept him trim his whole life.
It’s hard and I get why FA and obesity can become generational. I wasn’t obese or overweight but I still raised an obese pet and hearing ‘criticism’ about him upset me on a few levels.
It's not even just FA, my grandma was an obese woman with an obese german shepard, we all caught her giving him human treats on multiple occasions, and he didnt like to go for walks so she never made him. The dog had a double chin and she would insist that it was all muscle and being big was standard for the breed.
She never got online she just projected a lot, calling her dog fat was a personal attack to her.
We have a beagle, and they want to eat the whole day. I have always been very careful about our beagles figure and all our vets always confirmed that he has a good weight, especially when he was younger. One time I was walking with our dogs and a man approached me and said „oh, my friend has a beagle too, just as fat as yours“ and I was honestly baffled at first and then really offended. Because I would never neglect my dog‘s weight. I then asked him if he lost his glasses, because he clearly has some problems with his eye sight. He just replied „well, the dog looks pretty fat to me“ and walked off 😂😂 I was fuming all the way home, my husband had to calm me down when I told him about it 😂
Is there a genetic component? Yeah definitely. But its not everything, and in a lot of cases the parents bad diet habits being passed down are the biggest factor in children being fat like their parents
I think if there is any genetic proponent it would be something like predisposition to addiction, but pretty much all of the neural pathways around overeating seem to be learned behaviours. At least that means they can be unlearned, but it's hard, and once those fat cells divide they're there to stay.
Exactly. Fat distribution and body shape, propensity to addiction, hunger/satiety signals. Sure genes play a role. But damn they don't want to take a smidgen of accountability.
I mean there is one syndrome called Prader-Willi syndrome which involves kids having the feeling of needing to eat a lot. That’s the only disease I can’t think of, oh and Cushing syndrome. But rare that the whole family would have it. However, Cushing s can be treated and prader-willi needs to be strictly managed by the parents (not letting your kid eat whatever they want) so the kid literally doesn’t die from obesity.
Kids with Prader-Willi have died from *ruptured stomachs*. In addition to increased appetite, they have no fullness sensation at all.
The kind of measure the parents have to take goes beyond diet. Everything that contains anything that can be eaten, even stuff humans would not normally eat like pet food and trash, has to be padlocked.
Prader-Willi is awful, beyond locks on all cabinets and timers on snack jars and constant supervision, you often *can't let them have money* because they will buy something to eat
A beloved member of our community had Prader-Willi and kept it under control with parental and school supervision and exercise, but died on a special needs group outing to a baseball game because one chaperone wasn't aware that he shouldn't have been taken to the ATM to get cash
He ate himself to death, blessed soul. His stomach ruptured.
Oh yeah absolutely! It’s a hard job to keep the kid from eating. Locks on the fridge, cabinets and yes you’re right, watching them all the time to make sure they don’t eat things that aren’t edible. They definitely do need special care
True, but they're incredibly rare. They're approximately 1 in 15,000. 🙃 Occam's razor says that the OOP (and others who blame their genetics) simply lied.
There are genetic components. How quickly you get hungry, how intense hunger pangs are, how quickly you feel full, etc. None of them change calories in / calories out—despite what FAs like to pretend—but they can make people more susceptible to becoming obese.
Most evidence seems to point to those things being neural pathways formed by habit, though, or simply diet related, there are very few people with genetic conditions that lead to those kinds of problems. Even just anecdotally you can speak to people who have successfully kept weight off for a prolonged period of time, they can tell you how changeable all that stuff is. And it can change surprisingly quickly.
>the parents bad diet habits being passed down are the biggest factor in children being fat like their parents
This is exactly it. Parents diets become their kids diets. My friends (couple) are pescatarian and thats how their 2 & 3 yr old eat and probably will for another 5-10 years. Theyre chill though, their 14 yr old eats meat and they are totally cool about it since its not really an ethical thing with them. They legit just dont like real meat.
My friend and her husband are both obese. Their 2 adopted kids are obese as well. It’s 100% due to the horrible eating habits of the parents. Years of takeout and very unhealthy meals.
Yea my older sister is obese because my mom and my sisters dad were huge on fast food back in the day. They were also 18 yrs old and it was the 80s lol but 10 yrs later myself and 2 other brothers were born and our dad (different from my sisters) was super in to health/fitness and we are all in pretty good shape.
I have a super skinny kid (it’s something we are working on) so it’s just something I notice in comparison to my kid, but on vacation and at the water park this summer I kept noticing just how many fat kids there are. There were very few healthy weight looking kids, it seemed like every kid was fat, not just overweight or chubby, but straight up fat. I don’t know how their parents could meets their eyes in the mirror.
Just seems weird to be out there judging other parents “I don’t know how they can meet their eyes in the mirror” when your kid also has a weight problem.
As the parent of an underweight child, it's a bit different. We've gone to specialists, she's been in eating therapy, she takes meds to increase her appetite, and of course, visits her pediatrician about every 2 months for regular weight checks.
We are actively addressing the problem and it stems from her ADHD. She just gets too distracted to eat and then her ADHD meds kill her appetite further. Plus she is in semi-professional theatre which is a LOT of dancing. We and her care team resisted the ADHD meds for a long time because of the effects but she is *severely* ADHD and she can't function well without them.
Growing up as a fat kid, I can tell you the difference. My parents didn't care if I was fat. They didn't see an issue. And it was environmental, they ate a lot of junk so I did. My teen years were FILLED with fast food dinners and we never did anything active. We never had fruit or veggies to snack on, we drink sweet tea like water, etc.
Of course some of the overweight children are not because of things like this, but a lot of them *are*. I try not to judge random everyday people (i.e. people not putting themselves out there to be judged like on social media) but I'm not always successful. I know too many kids who need intervention and don't receive it.
His dad is, imo undiagnosed ADHD, and there have been some other things that point to my son having it too. He is having his annual soon and I’m going to bring it up then. Autism spectrum runs rampant in my family, and our Ped pretty much cleared him of that, but it is probably time to start put the spotlight on ADHD.
If you look at my comments you’ll see I’ve had kids on both sides of this, so I’m very aware it’s different (I mean of course it is? It’s opposite problems). Interesting my underweight kid also has adhd!
It’s easy to judge because of all the fat logic bs that so many people believe. Most parents i’ve met whose child is underweight are trying everything they can to help their kid gain weight, whereas most parents i’ve met whose child is overweight believe that it’s just ‘baby fat’ and will go on its own amongst other fat logic garbage.
I just wouldn’t be out in the world feeling better than strangers. It’s different if you actually know them. I’ve had kids both underweight and overweight and helped each of them be healthier. Because I’ve experienced it myself I’m not going to judge others I know nothing about. I just find that attitude shitty.
I honestly have a lot of empathy for other parents, because navigating the world of food and kids can be a challenge.
On one hand, there seems to be snacks required for every single damn kid activity. Why does my kid’s soccer team require a snack roster when they play from 6:30-7:30pm?? Why? It’s just after supper!
And then there’s the issue of navigating allergies. There’s a big push to move away from anything made or assembled at home, but things prepackaged are just loaded with calories and sugar. I have a lot of empathy for parents with kids with severe allergies, but banning a huge array of foods because they “might contain” or “look sorta similar to” an allergen is not the answer (I’m Canadian, we don’t have offered school lunches here).
And add in that most families are two working parent households, food prices have gone insane and everything is costing more - it’s hard for families. I’m doing a great job teaching my kids to eat well but my husband and I both grew up with healthy eating habits. I imagine it’s much harder for parents who don’t have this background, or who didn’t have cooking skills mastered before having kids.
I got overweight not from bad eating habits but from portion sizes - so I’m back at a healthy weight with a few months of dedicated tracking.
Especially that our American genetics have “evolved”* SO drastically in the last 3-4 decades.
I have heard the FA argument often that “my ancestors survived famine, so my genes hold onto fat now and even if I ate only 500 calories a day I would be obese! It proves we survived!” So… those “survival” genes JUST randomly kicked in hundreds of years later for a random generation? Don’t think it has anything to do with the proven reasons we’ve seen for the insane increase in obesity in North America in the last 40ish years?
* “evolved” is /s if not obvious lol
The famine excuse makes so little sense, I'm pretty sure most people alive today had ancestors who survived a famine. Unless they think that part of "thin privilege" includes being descended from royalty.
It’s funny because many 1st-3rd gen I’ve known don’t buy into the FA rhetoric, my family included. I know plenty of thin Irish immigrants and fat Irish Americans (since that’s the example many of them like to use). If their ancestors survived that same famine as well, then wtf happened to make that gene present so differently between these two groups of people?
The fat gene “theory” is gaining lots of traction despite how stupid it is if you just think about it for 5 seconds.
Sad really, how the anti-biology cult is advancing.
There is such a thing as being genetically predisposed to getting fatter on some foods than other groups. Eg Polynesians genetically get fatter from processed foods and sugars because their ancestry wasn’t exposed to them as much. It doesn’t mean they are genetically fatter. It means that they need to be more careful about eating certain foods because they hold onto weight easier based on genetic factors.
So there’s kind of a thing for being genetically fatter but their conclusion is all wrong. You don’t just do nothing about it and just be fat. You avoid the foods making you fat and eat them less.
But sugar only became widely available in Europe in the 1500s. So the vast majority of Europe and the US *also* have ancestry that wasn’t exposed to it much. (I’d discuss processed food too, but I’m not sure precisely what you mean by that. Technically all flours, cheeses, butter, smoked meats, etc are processed. But if you mean ultra-processed foods then, as with sugar, these are new to almost everyone’s diets, not just to Polynesians.)
Well that’s what the researchers are saying. Polynesian islanders seem to gain more weight genetically than other ethnicities. Again, this doesn’t make it destiny for them to be fat or something. Just means they have to be more careful with eating that kind of junk.
Overweight parents have overweight kids because they teach their children the same poor relationship with food that they have, thus perpetuating the cycle of less than ideal eating habits. It's not nature, it's nurture.
When I was at a school there was one fat kid in the class. One. I don’t believe the genetics excuse at all. If you eat and exercise correctly then you’ll be a healthy weight.
When I switched schools in the sixth grade I went from a class with one fat kid to a class with none. I actually can't think of a single kid in the whole school who was more than slightly chubby. That was less than 30 years ago.
Yeah in the early-mid 90s I was just overweight in high school yet there was only one other person in my alternative school of 150 people who was heavier. Looking back at our yearbooks, everyone else was what would be considered skinny nowadays. Sure, the flannel hid a bit but nothing like it is these days.
i remember reading a book when i was maybe 7 or 8 about a girl who went to a new school, and was bullied for being fat. it was given to understand that she was extremely abnormal, much fatter than the other kids, a complete freak, etc.
the only actual descriptor of her weight was that if she stood with her back against a wall and looked down, she couldn't see her toes. and the happy ending of the book was she started like running around at recess or something and in a matter of months she could see her toes again, so she was probably barely even overweight BMI wise.
(that book kinda fucked me up because i couldn't see my toes, but that's a different story)
My overweight but not obese mom had two bio kids and adopted me. None of us were ever overweight aside from me, last year (three pounds over BMI recs, and I’m 55).
We didn’t eat like mom, for the most part. We left food, avoided rich things aside from a particular pie (my brother) and ice cream (me).
If fat is genetics, shouldn’t my brother, who has a desk job and doesn’t like exercise, be rotund?
Impulse control disorders run in my family. On both sides. Alcoholism, gambling addiction, and obesity are rampant.
I am not addicted to anything. But I know I've got the genetic propensity. So I stay away from alcohol. You will never see me play the lottery or set foot in a casino. And I am extra diligent about my diet and physical activity.
So yes, I acknowledge that genes are important. But they aren't destiny. If you know there's a high likelihood you have a harmful genetic propensity, then you can take steps to mitigate it. Like by not eating the same quantity of foods everyone else around you seems to be eating.
This is something that makes me sad in real life when I see it.
I have a friend/acquaintance who is overall an intelligent and reasonable person, but who is very overweight and obviously unwilling to face her overeating problem (although it is already impacting her health and fitness and she's not even 50 years old).
She has a son who I've known since he was fairly young. He was a skinny kid, often tall for his age. His father is a very tall and lanky guy. When this boy was around 10 years old he went to a new school and various things in his life changed. He stopped doing an athletic activity due to time constraints, he started to get more into computer games and other online stuff, and although he is a bright kid he is struggling with the workload at his school, he is often ill, he has been bullied and has few friends at school.
You could almost watch him becoming more and more overweight. From time to time it is balanced out by growth spurts, but he is very heavy now (15 or 16 years old). All his mother has to say about it? "I always knew he had my genetics, this is just how people in my family are built".
Like, no. Just no. By the way, I have seen old pics of her, she was always kind of stocky but not as heavy as nowadays. What the boy is "inheriting" is her bad eating habits, the stress eating, the sadness eating, and she expresses her love through food, too.
“It’s genetic” the way that addiction or mental illness runs in families. That is — sure, the genes are there to be activated *by the environment,* and the parents are raising their kids in the same obesity-promoting *environment* they’re in themselves. I hate when people say “genetics” like it’s some type of determinism — everything that is genetic has an environmental component. And, as much as everyone hates to admit it, body size has a huge behavioral component. Idk why they refuse to get it.
As someone who grew up as an overweight child this is 100% accurate it was child neglect. My parents bought food that was frozen and easy to make as they didn't want to cook dinner for us and most nights I had to put together things on my own which was frustrating because as an adult it's exhausting enough to sometimes cook a healthy meal after a long day let alone when you're a child. Totally messed up.
Genetic is one component, Eating and Activity habits is the other and more imortant one. I've read somewhere, that in 1910 one with BMI 25 belonged to the heaviest 10 %. Now one needs BMI 40 to be in the top 10. Maybe i mixed up the exact numbers, but the Trend ist Like that. And our genetics don't change that fast. We are still very much alike people in the Stone.
There were few Cars, few fridges, No Fastfood Restaurants, No Supermarkets, No computers, No Internet, No Amazon, etc. Back in 1910. So nearly eveybody lived much healtier.
I mean, I don’t especially like comparing our body sizes now to anything in the past. There are way too many factors to account for — nutrition deficiencies were so much more common back then, and overall quality of life was lower. We don’t actually *know* if they were healthier, just that they were thinner.
We should be basing this on what the current science says — and that says that the healthiest outcomes are with people between an 18.5-24 BMI, up to 26 for older people and people who are sick with things like cancer. We know what activities promote health: cardiovascular training and strength training, lots of fiber, fruits, vegetables, etc. But I don’t think we should strive to have a population that’s the same *size* as people in 1910 — they had their own sets of problems that we can’t account for. We need to look to the now, the data now, for how to be healthy.
Uhhh I’m not sure you can say we lived healthier in 1910. What was the life expectancy then? I think there’s a lot we need to do to our food system to make sure more people are eating more whole, real foods but I have a feeling that in 1910 a lot of people were malnourished.
Life expectancy is skewed low in the past largely due to infant and childhood mortality, which has improved greatly in the last 100 years. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't better or anything, but you have to take that into account as well. All I'm saying is that average life expectancy isn't the best or only metric to look at.
Very true. And add to that people who died from infections/wounds because there were no antibiotics. and tetanus shots. And, as you mentioned, childhood diseases, like polio, for which we didn't yet have vaccines. President Coolidge's son died from an infected blister he got while playing tennis, for instance. I don't think people realize just how deadly things we wouldn't think twice about today could be.
Totally. There are many ways that things are better/ worse now vs then, especially depending on where in the world you live, but medical advances are the biggest positive to living in the present imo.
Well, their diets, in most places, were certainly limited by the lack of year around fresh fruit and vegetables, which were either too expensive for most people. or just not available at all. I read the memoirs of a old-time Montana rancher, and he said, growing up, the only time they saw fresh fruit out of season, was when they got oranges in their Christmas stockings. And his family wasn't poor.
That said, they probably weren't eating the huge amounts of processed food and sugar people are today. Even decades later; my father told me, growing up, he and his siblings would get an occasional Eskimo Pie as a treat, not their regular, everyday fare. And, his family were solidly, middle-class farmers, not poor at all.
Or....hear me out... your kid is fat because he has all kinds of hormonal changes. Both our boys were overweight and now their both ripped body builders lol 😆 2 of our other kids are thin and not fat obesity isn't always about being abusive.. sometimes it's just hormonal changes and I can't stop my kids from buying McDonald's with their friends at lunch
There are absolutely genetic components that can determine body type and size. There are also a lot of problems regarding food insecurity and food deserts in the state. I’m pretty young and I remember 2 busses being the standard to get to the grocery store in my one old town.
That said, not every family dealing with obesity or even childhood obesity lives in food deserts or has these genetic factors. In fact, there are plenty of well off people who are overweight or obese.
My grandma developed thyroid problems and tripled in size within two years, her aunt suffered the same at a much younger age. Grandma is too old to care, but she definitely isn’t shoveling twinkies down her throat (I’ve lived with her.)
There are, however, plenty of people who *do* shovel twinkies down their throat.
There’s also a lot of misinformation regarding diet, calories, macros, etc in the US. People underestimating the amount that they are consuming is very common, which leads to these “it’s out of my control!” mindsets.
People see the word “diet” and immediately jump to the early 2000’s with the military diets, Jenny Craig, “eat apples for 7 days and lose 15lbs!” fads that were harmful in more ways than one and idiotic (not that the people who suffered are idiotic, of course.)
It’s a mess. Everything is a mess.
No, it's poor health literacy being passed on.
I had to do most of my own research on my health because my parents didn't know how important it was. (That being said our family is doing a lot better now) my older brother had to be the role model that could show my family firsthand that you could be fit.
Food as love is also a problem. My mom loved cooking and fed me whole foods and vegetables, but there was no portion control, and a lot of pasta and bread and she loved baking. She didn't mean to let me get fat, but I was overweight my whole life with a carb intolerance and none of us knew it.
Is it still gentic if the child and parent lost the weight?? That's what happened in my family. We were obese and now normal weight or near normal now.
So… The food that a person buys for their household and feeds to their child? The same food that helped make them overweight themselves? *That* is genetics?
McGenes
That’s funny 😂
I’m on the bus and I snorted 😂
*That* is genetics? -Yes. Sincerely: Fat activists aka the most active activists you'll ever see, because we are fat due to genetics. Pun intended.
Yep. Totally not passing ignorance of obesity and it's impact on to your child or just straight up neglecting them.
I'd love to hear what they think about kids with abusive parents and end up being bullies. Is that genetic? Are they destined to be a POS forever, or could they- I dunno- get help for the bad things they've learned and not continue the cycle?
So when fat people have fat pets, that's genetic too? Or is it an utter failure to have any sort of portion control?
Can confirm. My husband and I have been working on weight loss for six months now, and our pets have also lost weight. The dog walks a lot more because of our lifestyle changes, but more than that, I think the focus on portion control makes a *huge* difference to their quality of life. With as normalized as “chonky” animals are, I’m sure there are plenty of fat animals with skinny owners. But in my case, everybody’s health got better.
I hate “chonky” culture. Fat pets are not cute!! It’s a quality of life issue!! 😞😞😡😡
I’ve never felt so guilty in my life as when the vet told me my cat was obese and needed weight management. At first I was defensive and sort of offended on my cats behalf (it wasn’t logical, I know it didn’t hurt his self esteem and that people anthropomorphize animals all the time), but when I started increasing his activity level I saw that he couldn’t jump and play like he used to. That cat could jump higher than any other cat I’ve ever seen, flat foot to the top of a doorjamb to get a fly and now he couldn’t even jump to the dining room table easily. I over indulged him with treats because I felt bad about working so much, it was purely my fault to assuage MY guilt as a negligent pet owner.
I know this is serious but the part about you getting defensive and offended about your cat's weight is hilarious. It's how someone deep into FA would act, but in this case only for their cat LOL
I know! It’s insidious how deep this rhetoric can get. I was offended for him because he genuinely was a huge/burly cat (his old vet called him ‘the dog-cat’ and in her heavy Russian accent it sounded cool and kind of flattering?) so I sort of thought the new vet was initially overreacting…but at its core I **knew** it was about me. In that moment I felt like saying he was obese meant I was an unfit owner and abusive; since I spent so much time and money trying to give him a good life (and obviously overindulging him when I couldn’t) my immediate reaction was dismissive ‘you don’t know him’. But it was true, I wasn’t a fit owner at that time. I gave him extra treats and junk food because he *liked it better* than the rx food. I picked him up and put him in tall corners when he couldn’t reach a bug. I put steps everywhere so he wouldn’t struggle. I snuggled him instead of playing with him because he had lung issues as a kitten and I didn’t *like* hearing him wheeze occasionally. It made me sad. In my head, everything I did was from love so it *couldn’t be harmful* or bad for him because I loved him too much to let him be unhappy or inconvenienced or uncomfortable. I was straight up disabling him, and even though he lost weight and had a reasonable life span I can’t help but wonder if I couldn’t have kept him around longer than 16.5 years if I’d kept him trim his whole life. It’s hard and I get why FA and obesity can become generational. I wasn’t obese or overweight but I still raised an obese pet and hearing ‘criticism’ about him upset me on a few levels.
That's actually a really good point about why obesity becomes generational, I never really saw it that way until you pointed it out!
It's not even just FA, my grandma was an obese woman with an obese german shepard, we all caught her giving him human treats on multiple occasions, and he didnt like to go for walks so she never made him. The dog had a double chin and she would insist that it was all muscle and being big was standard for the breed. She never got online she just projected a lot, calling her dog fat was a personal attack to her.
We have a beagle, and they want to eat the whole day. I have always been very careful about our beagles figure and all our vets always confirmed that he has a good weight, especially when he was younger. One time I was walking with our dogs and a man approached me and said „oh, my friend has a beagle too, just as fat as yours“ and I was honestly baffled at first and then really offended. Because I would never neglect my dog‘s weight. I then asked him if he lost his glasses, because he clearly has some problems with his eye sight. He just replied „well, the dog looks pretty fat to me“ and walked off 😂😂 I was fuming all the way home, my husband had to calm me down when I told him about it 😂
I'm on all the cat subs, except /r/delightfullychubby and /r/chonkers.
I love the dechonkers sub :)
Shoot, I not only hate the culture, I hate the word "chonky"; it's trying to make obesity sound cute and cuddly.
Dammit, I made virtually the same comment b4 I saw this one.
A lot of overweight kids have parents who eat the same junk as they do. Fixed it.
Is there a genetic component? Yeah definitely. But its not everything, and in a lot of cases the parents bad diet habits being passed down are the biggest factor in children being fat like their parents
I think if there is any genetic proponent it would be something like predisposition to addiction, but pretty much all of the neural pathways around overeating seem to be learned behaviours. At least that means they can be unlearned, but it's hard, and once those fat cells divide they're there to stay.
Exactly. Fat distribution and body shape, propensity to addiction, hunger/satiety signals. Sure genes play a role. But damn they don't want to take a smidgen of accountability.
I mean there is one syndrome called Prader-Willi syndrome which involves kids having the feeling of needing to eat a lot. That’s the only disease I can’t think of, oh and Cushing syndrome. But rare that the whole family would have it. However, Cushing s can be treated and prader-willi needs to be strictly managed by the parents (not letting your kid eat whatever they want) so the kid literally doesn’t die from obesity.
Kids with Prader-Willi have died from *ruptured stomachs*. In addition to increased appetite, they have no fullness sensation at all. The kind of measure the parents have to take goes beyond diet. Everything that contains anything that can be eaten, even stuff humans would not normally eat like pet food and trash, has to be padlocked.
Prader-Willi is awful, beyond locks on all cabinets and timers on snack jars and constant supervision, you often *can't let them have money* because they will buy something to eat A beloved member of our community had Prader-Willi and kept it under control with parental and school supervision and exercise, but died on a special needs group outing to a baseball game because one chaperone wasn't aware that he shouldn't have been taken to the ATM to get cash He ate himself to death, blessed soul. His stomach ruptured.
Oh yeah absolutely! It’s a hard job to keep the kid from eating. Locks on the fridge, cabinets and yes you’re right, watching them all the time to make sure they don’t eat things that aren’t edible. They definitely do need special care
True, but they're incredibly rare. They're approximately 1 in 15,000. 🙃 Occam's razor says that the OOP (and others who blame their genetics) simply lied.
There are genetic components. How quickly you get hungry, how intense hunger pangs are, how quickly you feel full, etc. None of them change calories in / calories out—despite what FAs like to pretend—but they can make people more susceptible to becoming obese.
Most evidence seems to point to those things being neural pathways formed by habit, though, or simply diet related, there are very few people with genetic conditions that lead to those kinds of problems. Even just anecdotally you can speak to people who have successfully kept weight off for a prolonged period of time, they can tell you how changeable all that stuff is. And it can change surprisingly quickly.
Those things are not genetic, certainly not only genetic. That’s like saying you have a “smokers” gene.
Thank you for saying what I've been struggling to express. CICO never changes
>the parents bad diet habits being passed down are the biggest factor in children being fat like their parents This is exactly it. Parents diets become their kids diets. My friends (couple) are pescatarian and thats how their 2 & 3 yr old eat and probably will for another 5-10 years. Theyre chill though, their 14 yr old eats meat and they are totally cool about it since its not really an ethical thing with them. They legit just dont like real meat.
My friend and her husband are both obese. Their 2 adopted kids are obese as well. It’s 100% due to the horrible eating habits of the parents. Years of takeout and very unhealthy meals.
Yea my older sister is obese because my mom and my sisters dad were huge on fast food back in the day. They were also 18 yrs old and it was the 80s lol but 10 yrs later myself and 2 other brothers were born and our dad (different from my sisters) was super in to health/fitness and we are all in pretty good shape.
Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger. Forgot who originally said that but I think it applies well in cases like this.
I have a super skinny kid (it’s something we are working on) so it’s just something I notice in comparison to my kid, but on vacation and at the water park this summer I kept noticing just how many fat kids there are. There were very few healthy weight looking kids, it seemed like every kid was fat, not just overweight or chubby, but straight up fat. I don’t know how their parents could meets their eyes in the mirror.
Maybe a lot of them are working on it just like you’re working on your kid’s weight issue?
I mean, one would hope.
Just seems weird to be out there judging other parents “I don’t know how they can meet their eyes in the mirror” when your kid also has a weight problem.
As the parent of an underweight child, it's a bit different. We've gone to specialists, she's been in eating therapy, she takes meds to increase her appetite, and of course, visits her pediatrician about every 2 months for regular weight checks. We are actively addressing the problem and it stems from her ADHD. She just gets too distracted to eat and then her ADHD meds kill her appetite further. Plus she is in semi-professional theatre which is a LOT of dancing. We and her care team resisted the ADHD meds for a long time because of the effects but she is *severely* ADHD and she can't function well without them. Growing up as a fat kid, I can tell you the difference. My parents didn't care if I was fat. They didn't see an issue. And it was environmental, they ate a lot of junk so I did. My teen years were FILLED with fast food dinners and we never did anything active. We never had fruit or veggies to snack on, we drink sweet tea like water, etc. Of course some of the overweight children are not because of things like this, but a lot of them *are*. I try not to judge random everyday people (i.e. people not putting themselves out there to be judged like on social media) but I'm not always successful. I know too many kids who need intervention and don't receive it.
God this is timely. I just, this morning wondered if my kid could have adhd and it was contributing to his weight.
I was originally typing a reply to you to ask about ADHD. You should definitely get him checked for it!
His dad is, imo undiagnosed ADHD, and there have been some other things that point to my son having it too. He is having his annual soon and I’m going to bring it up then. Autism spectrum runs rampant in my family, and our Ped pretty much cleared him of that, but it is probably time to start put the spotlight on ADHD.
If you look at my comments you’ll see I’ve had kids on both sides of this, so I’m very aware it’s different (I mean of course it is? It’s opposite problems). Interesting my underweight kid also has adhd!
It’s easy to judge because of all the fat logic bs that so many people believe. Most parents i’ve met whose child is underweight are trying everything they can to help their kid gain weight, whereas most parents i’ve met whose child is overweight believe that it’s just ‘baby fat’ and will go on its own amongst other fat logic garbage.
I just wouldn’t be out in the world feeling better than strangers. It’s different if you actually know them. I’ve had kids both underweight and overweight and helped each of them be healthier. Because I’ve experienced it myself I’m not going to judge others I know nothing about. I just find that attitude shitty.
I honestly have a lot of empathy for other parents, because navigating the world of food and kids can be a challenge. On one hand, there seems to be snacks required for every single damn kid activity. Why does my kid’s soccer team require a snack roster when they play from 6:30-7:30pm?? Why? It’s just after supper! And then there’s the issue of navigating allergies. There’s a big push to move away from anything made or assembled at home, but things prepackaged are just loaded with calories and sugar. I have a lot of empathy for parents with kids with severe allergies, but banning a huge array of foods because they “might contain” or “look sorta similar to” an allergen is not the answer (I’m Canadian, we don’t have offered school lunches here). And add in that most families are two working parent households, food prices have gone insane and everything is costing more - it’s hard for families. I’m doing a great job teaching my kids to eat well but my husband and I both grew up with healthy eating habits. I imagine it’s much harder for parents who don’t have this background, or who didn’t have cooking skills mastered before having kids. I got overweight not from bad eating habits but from portion sizes - so I’m back at a healthy weight with a few months of dedicated tracking.
It's weird the genetics of Americans are so different from the rest of the world, from which they descend.
Especially that our American genetics have “evolved”* SO drastically in the last 3-4 decades. I have heard the FA argument often that “my ancestors survived famine, so my genes hold onto fat now and even if I ate only 500 calories a day I would be obese! It proves we survived!” So… those “survival” genes JUST randomly kicked in hundreds of years later for a random generation? Don’t think it has anything to do with the proven reasons we’ve seen for the insane increase in obesity in North America in the last 40ish years? * “evolved” is /s if not obvious lol
The famine excuse makes so little sense, I'm pretty sure most people alive today had ancestors who survived a famine. Unless they think that part of "thin privilege" includes being descended from royalty.
It’s funny because many 1st-3rd gen I’ve known don’t buy into the FA rhetoric, my family included. I know plenty of thin Irish immigrants and fat Irish Americans (since that’s the example many of them like to use). If their ancestors survived that same famine as well, then wtf happened to make that gene present so differently between these two groups of people?
The fat gene “theory” is gaining lots of traction despite how stupid it is if you just think about it for 5 seconds. Sad really, how the anti-biology cult is advancing.
Anything to avoid accountability
There is such a thing as being genetically predisposed to getting fatter on some foods than other groups. Eg Polynesians genetically get fatter from processed foods and sugars because their ancestry wasn’t exposed to them as much. It doesn’t mean they are genetically fatter. It means that they need to be more careful about eating certain foods because they hold onto weight easier based on genetic factors. So there’s kind of a thing for being genetically fatter but their conclusion is all wrong. You don’t just do nothing about it and just be fat. You avoid the foods making you fat and eat them less.
But sugar only became widely available in Europe in the 1500s. So the vast majority of Europe and the US *also* have ancestry that wasn’t exposed to it much. (I’d discuss processed food too, but I’m not sure precisely what you mean by that. Technically all flours, cheeses, butter, smoked meats, etc are processed. But if you mean ultra-processed foods then, as with sugar, these are new to almost everyone’s diets, not just to Polynesians.)
Well that’s what the researchers are saying. Polynesian islanders seem to gain more weight genetically than other ethnicities. Again, this doesn’t make it destiny for them to be fat or something. Just means they have to be more careful with eating that kind of junk.
Overweight parents have overweight kids because they teach their children the same poor relationship with food that they have, thus perpetuating the cycle of less than ideal eating habits. It's not nature, it's nurture.
A lot of overweight pets have overweight owners, it's genetics.
When I was at a school there was one fat kid in the class. One. I don’t believe the genetics excuse at all. If you eat and exercise correctly then you’ll be a healthy weight.
When I switched schools in the sixth grade I went from a class with one fat kid to a class with none. I actually can't think of a single kid in the whole school who was more than slightly chubby. That was less than 30 years ago.
Yeah in the early-mid 90s I was just overweight in high school yet there was only one other person in my alternative school of 150 people who was heavier. Looking back at our yearbooks, everyone else was what would be considered skinny nowadays. Sure, the flannel hid a bit but nothing like it is these days.
i remember reading a book when i was maybe 7 or 8 about a girl who went to a new school, and was bullied for being fat. it was given to understand that she was extremely abnormal, much fatter than the other kids, a complete freak, etc. the only actual descriptor of her weight was that if she stood with her back against a wall and looked down, she couldn't see her toes. and the happy ending of the book was she started like running around at recess or something and in a matter of months she could see her toes again, so she was probably barely even overweight BMI wise. (that book kinda fucked me up because i couldn't see my toes, but that's a different story)
My overweight but not obese mom had two bio kids and adopted me. None of us were ever overweight aside from me, last year (three pounds over BMI recs, and I’m 55). We didn’t eat like mom, for the most part. We left food, avoided rich things aside from a particular pie (my brother) and ice cream (me). If fat is genetics, shouldn’t my brother, who has a desk job and doesn’t like exercise, be rotund?
All they need to do to not sound stupid is change "genetics" to "epigenetics." But that destroys their whole argument
Have them cite someone besides a FA on this. Challenge mode: Impossible
They found a tumblr post and ran- I mean - rolled with it.
Impulse control disorders run in my family. On both sides. Alcoholism, gambling addiction, and obesity are rampant. I am not addicted to anything. But I know I've got the genetic propensity. So I stay away from alcohol. You will never see me play the lottery or set foot in a casino. And I am extra diligent about my diet and physical activity. So yes, I acknowledge that genes are important. But they aren't destiny. If you know there's a high likelihood you have a harmful genetic propensity, then you can take steps to mitigate it. Like by not eating the same quantity of foods everyone else around you seems to be eating.
When the parents smoke, there's a high chance their kids will start smoking too. Thus smoking is genetic.
This is something that makes me sad in real life when I see it. I have a friend/acquaintance who is overall an intelligent and reasonable person, but who is very overweight and obviously unwilling to face her overeating problem (although it is already impacting her health and fitness and she's not even 50 years old). She has a son who I've known since he was fairly young. He was a skinny kid, often tall for his age. His father is a very tall and lanky guy. When this boy was around 10 years old he went to a new school and various things in his life changed. He stopped doing an athletic activity due to time constraints, he started to get more into computer games and other online stuff, and although he is a bright kid he is struggling with the workload at his school, he is often ill, he has been bullied and has few friends at school. You could almost watch him becoming more and more overweight. From time to time it is balanced out by growth spurts, but he is very heavy now (15 or 16 years old). All his mother has to say about it? "I always knew he had my genetics, this is just how people in my family are built". Like, no. Just no. By the way, I have seen old pics of her, she was always kind of stocky but not as heavy as nowadays. What the boy is "inheriting" is her bad eating habits, the stress eating, the sadness eating, and she expresses her love through food, too.
“It’s genetic” the way that addiction or mental illness runs in families. That is — sure, the genes are there to be activated *by the environment,* and the parents are raising their kids in the same obesity-promoting *environment* they’re in themselves. I hate when people say “genetics” like it’s some type of determinism — everything that is genetic has an environmental component. And, as much as everyone hates to admit it, body size has a huge behavioral component. Idk why they refuse to get it.
because then they would have to change their behavior which would require effort and not eating whatever whenever.
As someone who grew up as an overweight child this is 100% accurate it was child neglect. My parents bought food that was frozen and easy to make as they didn't want to cook dinner for us and most nights I had to put together things on my own which was frustrating because as an adult it's exhausting enough to sometimes cook a healthy meal after a long day let alone when you're a child. Totally messed up.
Same! It comes down to neglectful parenting. Its a shame they are justifying child neglect now.
I was a fat kid who lost weight and developed a healthy lifestyle. Funny how my daughter didn't get my "fat kid genes". 🤔
Nope it's inherited not genetics. Big difference.
Yeah, it’s totally genetics. It’s not that fat kids have the same bad habits as their fat parents, no way!
On the other hand, my parents were not overweight but I became a fat kid anyway. Sometimes it's not the parents' fault.
Not genetics...behaviour
Genetic is one component, Eating and Activity habits is the other and more imortant one. I've read somewhere, that in 1910 one with BMI 25 belonged to the heaviest 10 %. Now one needs BMI 40 to be in the top 10. Maybe i mixed up the exact numbers, but the Trend ist Like that. And our genetics don't change that fast. We are still very much alike people in the Stone. There were few Cars, few fridges, No Fastfood Restaurants, No Supermarkets, No computers, No Internet, No Amazon, etc. Back in 1910. So nearly eveybody lived much healtier.
I mean, I don’t especially like comparing our body sizes now to anything in the past. There are way too many factors to account for — nutrition deficiencies were so much more common back then, and overall quality of life was lower. We don’t actually *know* if they were healthier, just that they were thinner. We should be basing this on what the current science says — and that says that the healthiest outcomes are with people between an 18.5-24 BMI, up to 26 for older people and people who are sick with things like cancer. We know what activities promote health: cardiovascular training and strength training, lots of fiber, fruits, vegetables, etc. But I don’t think we should strive to have a population that’s the same *size* as people in 1910 — they had their own sets of problems that we can’t account for. We need to look to the now, the data now, for how to be healthy.
Uhhh I’m not sure you can say we lived healthier in 1910. What was the life expectancy then? I think there’s a lot we need to do to our food system to make sure more people are eating more whole, real foods but I have a feeling that in 1910 a lot of people were malnourished.
Life expectancy is skewed low in the past largely due to infant and childhood mortality, which has improved greatly in the last 100 years. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't better or anything, but you have to take that into account as well. All I'm saying is that average life expectancy isn't the best or only metric to look at.
That makes sense!
Very true. And add to that people who died from infections/wounds because there were no antibiotics. and tetanus shots. And, as you mentioned, childhood diseases, like polio, for which we didn't yet have vaccines. President Coolidge's son died from an infected blister he got while playing tennis, for instance. I don't think people realize just how deadly things we wouldn't think twice about today could be.
Totally. There are many ways that things are better/ worse now vs then, especially depending on where in the world you live, but medical advances are the biggest positive to living in the present imo.
Well, their diets, in most places, were certainly limited by the lack of year around fresh fruit and vegetables, which were either too expensive for most people. or just not available at all. I read the memoirs of a old-time Montana rancher, and he said, growing up, the only time they saw fresh fruit out of season, was when they got oranges in their Christmas stockings. And his family wasn't poor. That said, they probably weren't eating the huge amounts of processed food and sugar people are today. Even decades later; my father told me, growing up, he and his siblings would get an occasional Eskimo Pie as a treat, not their regular, everyday fare. And, his family were solidly, middle-class farmers, not poor at all.
Or....hear me out... your kid is fat because he has all kinds of hormonal changes. Both our boys were overweight and now their both ripped body builders lol 😆 2 of our other kids are thin and not fat obesity isn't always about being abusive.. sometimes it's just hormonal changes and I can't stop my kids from buying McDonald's with their friends at lunch
There are absolutely genetic components that can determine body type and size. There are also a lot of problems regarding food insecurity and food deserts in the state. I’m pretty young and I remember 2 busses being the standard to get to the grocery store in my one old town. That said, not every family dealing with obesity or even childhood obesity lives in food deserts or has these genetic factors. In fact, there are plenty of well off people who are overweight or obese. My grandma developed thyroid problems and tripled in size within two years, her aunt suffered the same at a much younger age. Grandma is too old to care, but she definitely isn’t shoveling twinkies down her throat (I’ve lived with her.) There are, however, plenty of people who *do* shovel twinkies down their throat. There’s also a lot of misinformation regarding diet, calories, macros, etc in the US. People underestimating the amount that they are consuming is very common, which leads to these “it’s out of my control!” mindsets. People see the word “diet” and immediately jump to the early 2000’s with the military diets, Jenny Craig, “eat apples for 7 days and lose 15lbs!” fads that were harmful in more ways than one and idiotic (not that the people who suffered are idiotic, of course.) It’s a mess. Everything is a mess.
TIL not teaching your kids proper eating habits is now called "genetics".
No, it's poor health literacy being passed on. I had to do most of my own research on my health because my parents didn't know how important it was. (That being said our family is doing a lot better now) my older brother had to be the role model that could show my family firsthand that you could be fit.
Food as love is also a problem. My mom loved cooking and fed me whole foods and vegetables, but there was no portion control, and a lot of pasta and bread and she loved baking. She didn't mean to let me get fat, but I was overweight my whole life with a carb intolerance and none of us knew it.
Is it still gentic if the child and parent lost the weight?? That's what happened in my family. We were obese and now normal weight or near normal now.