One expert claims that Britain's obesity epidemic has its links with the increasing number of large babies who are born by C-section citing that the increasing number of women who go through the operation allowed the babies who would not have survived in the past to survive.
Dr. Edward Archer said that the growing prevalence of birth by C-section rewrites the rule of evolution by removing the process of natural selection. The controversial expert likewise said that mothers who are overweight produce unnaturally big babies that in the past, when C-section was still unheard of, would not have survived.
Archer also said that the women who were born via C-section tend to go through the operation themselves when giving birth to their own child and this means that the effect has snowballed over the generations.
More than one in four births in the UK goes through C-section. In 1980, the rate of C-section birth was only nine percent and the number continues to climb. Archers said that this leads to "sky-rocketing" number of people who are obese.
The U.K. sees hundreds of clinically obese babies born each year. Since 2011, as many as 1,403 newborns were considered obese, or those who weigh at least 9 lbs. and the number appears to be partly driven by the obesity epidemic.
Being born obese also poses problems to the babies as they may suffer from a number of health risks later in life. Daghni Rajasingam, from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said that women with higher body mass index (BMI) tend to undergo C-section births and the operation is associated with unwanted health conditions.
Babies who were born by C-section, for instance, have higher incidence of obesity and cardiovascular disease later in life albeit this link is not necessarily a cause and effect relationship.
Mothers who are overweight or obese and who suffer from type 2 diabetes were more likely to give birth to heavier babies because the developing fetus receives more sugar through the placenta. It is also believed that most of the obese children will continue to be overweight.
Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum said that the obesity problem has its roots early in life.
"Quite simply, the number of pregnant women who are obese at the start is increasing," Fry said. "Successive governments have not really addressed the obesity problem. It starts at conception and sometimes even before then."
