Are fat moms to blame for fat kids ? Just still out

British researchers who tried to show why overweight mothers tend to have overweight children said on Monday they had filled in one small piece of the puzzle. Their reassuring finding: women who are too fat when pregnant are probably not somehow driving the obesity epidemic by programming their children to be fat. But there is a strong link between overweight mothers and overweight children that still needs to be explained, Debbie Lawlor of Britain’s University of Bristol and colleagues said. They did find that if a child became overweight by age 9 or 11, the mother was more likely to have been overweight or obese than was the father. Then they looked at one gene that may explain this association-the "fat mass and obesity associated", or FTO gene. What they did conclude was that obese mothers are unlikely to be driving a growing obesity epidemic by having babies who are metabolically programmed to get fat as they get older. But mothers are somehow involved in other ways, they added.