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Obesity should be blamed on parents
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
A group of scientists led by Dr. Stuart Agras from Stanford University came to the conclusion that the problem of obesity and excess weight can be solved by a rational approach to the nutrition of young children.
Often in families where parents themselves have problems with excess weight, children are at greater risk of developing identical problems in the future. This is due to the fact that the family environment provokes disruptions in the process of normal nutrition of the child. Parents take an overly active part in feeding children and often simply "stuff" them, out of fear that the child will remain hungry. Such behavior of household members in turn does not allow the child to adequately assess the feeling of satiety and hunger, which simply deforms his concept of the process of nutrition as a whole.
The experts involved 62 families with children aged two to four in the study. At least one of the parents suffered from problems with excess weight or obesity.
The families were divided into two groups. The first group of parents changed their habits and approach to children's nutrition, guided by the principle of "divided responsibility." In general, this method consists of parents providing food, and the responsibility of the children is to eat it. However, there is a small caveat - no one is forced or coerced. Parents are only responsible for where, at what time and what food they give, and the child is free to decide for himself whether he will eat part of the portion or not touch it at all.
The second group of parents was monitored by the National Institute of Health. These families followed the We Can program, which is aimed at organizing healthy eating and promoting physical activity.
An analysis of the information obtained led the scientists to the conclusion that parents who lived according to the “shared responsibility” program stopped exerting strong pressure on their children, compared to families who took part in the “We Can” program.
"Dividing responsibility" led to the fact that parents stopped evaluating the child's feelings of satiety or hunger by themselves and stopped the "battle". Some children, to the great surprise of their parents, even began to try products that they flatly refused to even look at before the experiment.
The second group's success rates were not so rosy. The principle of healthy eating in itself certainly has only a positive meaning, but the parents' desire to feed their child healthy food led to the opposite results. Although they changed their diet and lifestyle, their approach to feeding their child remained the same.
"The new study is not unconditional and affirmative. In order to claim the benefits of this or that method, we must conduct large-scale observations of the results of the experiments and make sure that they really help in the fight against excess weight," Dr. Agras concluded.
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