BRISTOL , England, March 11 (UPI) -- Maternal and paternal weight are associated with an offspring's weight, but the effect is too weak to explain the growing obesity crisis, a British study says.
Debbie Lawlor and colleagues at University of Bristol used two approaches to test the "developmental overnutrition" hypothesis, which asserts that if a woman is overweight during pregnancy, high sugar and fat levels in her body might permanently affect her growing baby's appetite control and metabolism.
The researchers used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to look for associations between the pre-pregnancy body mass index of the parents of about 4,000 children and the children's fat mass at ages 9 to 11 years.
"Our study indicates that developmental overnutrition has not been a major driver of the recent obesity epidemic," Lawlor said in a statement.
Researchers found that both maternal and paternal BMI were positively associated with offspring fat mass but the effect of maternal BMI was greater than the effect of paternal BMI.
