Italian researchers found that a strong family history of obesity doesn't make it inevitable that children will follow the same path. When 16 young healthy men eat a meal, the rate of calories burned in the following eight hours was different.The parents of eight men were overweight and the other eight had parents with a normal weight. The men with a strong family history of obesity burned almost 50% fewer fat calories in the eight hours after a meal than the men with parents of a normal weight. However, the men with overweight parents weighed about the same as the men with normal-weight parents. Despite the fact that genetics appear to predispose some to obesity, that is just a predisposition and not the one-way tunnel. In other words, your genetics may load the gun, but it's your environment — the food you eat and the exercise you do (or don't do) — that pulls the trigger.