A new report suggests that you can blame your fat brother or sister for your increased risk of developing love handles, according to new findings by researchers at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy.
While it is known that a person’s risk of obesity increases if they have family members who are obese, there has been little study of which family members impact the risk the most. To better understand this phenomenon, researchers analyzed data from over 10,000 individuals and nearly 2,000 families. After analyzing physical activity, demographic information and aspects about food environment, researchers concluded:
- A person’s obesity risk is more than doubled if they have an obese sibling compared to an obese parent.
- That risk is even greater if the siblings are of the same gender.
- In families with only one child, an obese parent more than doubled the child’s risk of obesity.
- In two-child families, having an obese sibling was associated with more than a five times greater risk of obesity than if the sibling was not obese.
- In two-child families where both children are the same sex, if the older sibling was obese, the youngest daughter was 8.6 times more likely to be obese while the youngest son was 11.4 times more likely to be obese.
Lead author Mark Pachucki said he was surprised by the findings.
“It’s well known that diet and physical activity are key determinants of obesity among both adults and children; and prior research has shown that parents have a direct impact on children’s eating habits through shopping and preparing meals and on their exercise by encouraging and facilitating access to activities,” said Pachucki. “I went into this study expecting that, given parents’ oversized roles in their children’s lives, parental obesity would have a stronger association than a sibling’s obesity; but I was wrong.”
Pachucki believes the findings suggest that younger siblings take a lot of behavioral cues from their siblings, and that poor eating or exercise habits of one sibling can directly and indirectly affect the other. He concluded by saying that he wanted to run a similar study on a larger group to better determine causation.
Dr. Silverman comments
This study is very interesting. I went into the study with a similar mindset. Since parents are most likely doing the shopping and food prep, one would think that an obese parent would increase the likelihood of an obese child more than that of an obese sibling, but the data shows that it’s not the case.
Big brothers and sisters should make it a point to practice healthy eating habits, for their sake and for their younger sibling’s sake.
Related source: Harvard.edu