Mother's early puberty boosts child's obesity risk

[kevin mckay]

http://www.newscientist.com/article....ine-news_rss20

as an aside, I thought I read some study suggesting girls who eat soy based formula reached puberty earlier because of the estrogen...?

[Scott Kustes]

I've also heard that girls that eat a high carb (and therefore high insulin) diet reach puberty earlier. I'm betting there is a huge behavioral component to this correlation between mother's age of first menstruation and child's weight. The early menstruators probably eat closer to the SAD than others, being pushed to early puberty from all of the insulin signaling the body of an environment of surplus food (awkward sentence...someone revise that for me). This diet is then carried over to the child, who lo and behold, also grows up to be fat.

I always question the "genetics" of fatness in a family. I don't doubt that some people are more susceptible to be overweight, but I think more of it is that grandma and grandpa (who were fat) taught momma and siblings how to eat. Momma and siblings (who were also fat due to g'ma's and g'pa's recommendations) taught sons and daughters how to eat. Sons and daughters grow up overweight due to following the familial tradition and then teach the grandkids how to eat. Any weight to this theory?

[Elliot Royce]

I think there's a lot to it...think about the Scandinavians in Norway and Sweden....not a lot of hugely obese people there....then think about them in the US....not to pick on Scandinavians. Germans are similar. There are very few really fat Europeans (I lived there for 11 years so I have some exposure). Having said that, obesity can still be a disease...no one says it has to be purely hereditary.

Having read the Omnivore's Dilemma, I do think that the culprit is the US food industry which, in line with market forces, has created thousands of ways to indulge your tastebuds, almost entirely with sugar-based stimulation. If you think back to what was available foodwise 50 years ago, you just weren't likely to want to eat enough to get truly obese.

I mean a McDonalds meal is designed to suck you in with the salty fries and the sugary burger and then make you hungry again in an hour or so.