Secondhand obesity

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Secondhand obesity is the effect of a parent's obesity on the child. There is evidence suggesting that children "learn" to be obese from their parents. Thus obese parents may create an unintended health risk for their children by their eating habits because children may "imitate" their behavior and become obese themselves.

The phrase "secondhand obesity" was adapted^{[citation needed]} from another phrase currently in use, "secondhand smoke," which refers to the negative health effects incurred by children as a result of those children being exposed to the smoke from another smoker (usually a parent) in their household. The use of "secondhand" in these contexts refers to the indirect consequences on others of actions that initially only affect the actor.

Scientific evidence suggests that parents who are obese create an unintended health risk for their children in the long-run, due to their children adopting the same eating habits that may have led to the parent's or parents' obesity, which may lead to obesity in the child. The child might thereby incur the host of health problems that obesity causes. [1]. "Secondhand obesity" could also refer to the more general phenomenon of the acceptance of one's own obesity as a result of routinely seeing many others who are also obese [2].

Secondhand obesity was discussed on The O'Reilly Factor, an American talk show, on March 30th, 2006.