Overweight mothers condemn children to obese childhood

Overweight mothers condemn children to obese childhood

Last updated at 18:19pm on 7th September 2007 Comments (1)

Previous research has shown that babies are born with a higher amount of body fat if their mothers are significantly overweight during pregnancy (Posed my models)

Overweight mothers-to-be may be condemning their children to a lifetime of weight problems.

Research shows that women who are heavier than they should be while pregnant are more likely to have children who are fat by the age of nine.

Women who smoked during pregnancy also had fatter sons and daughters, the University of Southampton researchers found.

Previous studies have shown that babies are more likely to be plump if their mothers are overweight while carrying them, but this is the first to make a link with a child's weight in later years.

The findings come as Britain fights the worst weight problem in Europe, with almost a quarter of adults classed as obese.

In the latest study, researchers measured more than 200 nine-year-olds whose mothers had been monitored before and during pregnancy.

Analysis showed a clear link between the women's body mass index, which was used as an indicator of weight, and the bodies of their children in years to come.

Researcher Dr Catharine Gale said: "We found that mothers with a higher pre-pregnant BMI, or a larger mid-upper arm circumference in late pregnancy, tended to have children with greater adiposity or fatness, at the age of nine.

"The extent to which this is attributable to genetic factors, the influence of the mother's lifestyle on her child, or to physical changes to the child's fat mass brought on by their mother's adiposity during pregnancy, is not yet known."

The study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, also showed that children were more likely to be rotund at nine if they had put on a lot of weight in infancy, had not been breast-fed, or if their mothers had smoked in pregnancy.