Parents and their children

[Feanor]

It's pretty much accepted as trufax that children take after their parents, as regards eating habits.
Fat parents -> fat kids etc.
And there is certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence.
Go to Florida in the school hols, and the comedy fatty families are not American. They are from the UK.

Now, I regularly attend national-level athletics events with Junior.
And I'm constantly surprised by the spectators.
Yes, most are parents who appear to be much like myself.
But a *very large* minority appear to be *very much* outwith the athletic mould.
I'm seeing say U16 athletes with a very athletic build running say 1500m, at very competitive times, with parents barely able to waddle to the car.

What's going on here?

[Julian]

The parents also used to do competitive sport.  Then they had kids, stopped racing, but didn't change their calorie intake.

That was certainly true of a lot of the parents when I used to fence, so that would be my guess.

[Peter]

It's pretty much accepted as trufax that children take after their parents, as regards eating habits.
Fat parents -> fat kids etc.
And there is certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence.
Go to Florida in the school hols, and the comedy fatty families are not American. They are from the UK.

Now, I regularly attend national-level athletics events with Junior.
And I'm constantly surprised by the spectators.
Yes, most are parents who appear to be much like myself.
But a *very large* minority appear to be *very much* outwith the athletic mould.
I'm seeing say U16 athletes with a very athletic build running say 1500m, at very competitive times, with parents barely able to waddle to the car.

What's going on here?

adoption?

[hellymedic]

Maybe some of us, myself included, are not seeing much of the obesity epidemic. There must be loads of very fat people in the general population, whom we rarely see.
My 16 year old nephew's a runner. He's skinny and his parents are average, weight wise.