Health Systems: Research & Counselling

Is obesity hereditary?

French researchers have recently found that the type of food that obese parents eat that lead to their weight gain can lead to their children being obese too. Therefore the researchers claim that obesity is hereditary even though the weight gain is caused by the environment we are in, eg what foods are available to us and what foods we eat. The researchers have found that people in contries with obesity problems eat more omega-6 fatty acids and less omega-3 fatty acids, which causes the weight gain. The researchers discovered that this wrong proportion of fatty acids is translated into the breast milk of the mothers, which means that newborn babies are fed the wrong proportion of these fatty acids from birth, which leads to them getting accustomed to such a diet and therefore choosing a similar diet when they grow up, meaning that losing weight is chemically more difficult for them. This begs the question of whether it is worth encouraging obese and overweight people to feed their babies using bottled preparations instead of breastfeeding their newborns to break the obesity chain. Some may argue that this is unethical and that it infringes these people’s rights or discriminates against them in some way, but I think that it is no different from prescribing the children some medicine to cure an illness. If not breastfeeding the babies will help them grow up fit and healthy instead of overweight and in danger of diseases such as diabetes and heart problems, I think it should be encouraged and advised by the medical professionals to bottle feed them. Obviosly more research is necessary to confirm the French researchers'findings concerning the passage of obesity to the children through their mothers'milk, but if the findings are confirmed, steps should be taken to prevent the spread of obesity for the sake of the future generations.