Children of obese parents are most at risk of becoming obese.

The study is based on data from a population-based cohort of 2,269 children aged between eight and eleven years old.
These findings are important because they confirm that in children genes play a very important role in determining body weight. Researchers used a new method called Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA), to investigate the molecular genetic heritability of body weight in children. At present only a few genetic variants have been discovered, and these explain a very small amount of individual differences in body weight (~2%). These findings suggest there are hundreds of other genetic variants influencing body weight that are yet to be discovered.