I remember an overweight friend of mine once telling me how she noticed how people watched everything she ate. I think the same is at work here: we notice the obese family and assume the obese parents are passing their 'bad eating habits' to their kids. But if we saw a thin parent with a big kid, we don't attribute that sort of 'vice' to the parent.
Weight seems to the one of the few things that people are still allowed to openly discrimate against. I can honestly say that because I often am aware of obesity-related bias, and because of my psych studies where they talk about 'confirmation bias' (where people specifically look for examples in their surroundings to support their prejudices or bias) I specifically 'people watch' with that in mind all day everyday and know for a fact that an entire overweight family is far less common than people make out. You are JUST AS LIKELY to see overweight parents with thin kids, or thin parents with overweight kids.
Except when you've got it in your head that fat parents=fat kids, those families are the ones you tend to remember time and time again.
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