From Don Ledger:

Re: Overeating learned in infancy, study suggests (May 23, 2013): I believe there is some truth to this. I’m 68. My parents were both children of the depression when food was scarce. I constantly heard the remarks, clean off your plate, other kids elsewhere (usually China) don’t have much to eat. I think this was a throwback to when they had little variety of food and were happy to be eating at all. Strangely my father’s side was thin and my mother’s side obese yet my mother is 90 and my father died at 57 from plugged arteries. Myself and my two sisters are overweight. A cycle was begun back then that seems to have flowed through to the grandchildren. For myself I got chubby around 9 years and it went away at 12-13. But after marrying in my early twenties it came back. There are variables but we all seem to take after mom.