Overweight babies are significantly more likely to go on to develop early age bowel cancer, according to a new study.The number of under-50s being diagnosed with bowel cancer is on the rise in the UK, but the cause of this increase remains largely a mystery amongst experts.However, a new study, published by the esteemed Yale School of Public Health, has found that excess weight at birth, along with having an older father, markedly increases the chances of young patients developing the disease.The finding is significant because studies show there are an increasing number of 'giant babies' in the UK.The condition, known as foetal macrosomia - literally 'big body' in Greek - refers to newborns weighing 8lb 13oz or more, and is thought to now affect around one in ten babies in the UK.Crucially, experts say that macrosomia is typically triggered when the parents are also overweight or have diabetes, meaning the lifestyle choices of parents could doom children to a life-threatening cancer diagnosis.The findings come four years after the death of Dame Deborah James, also known as Bowel Babe, the journalist and campaigner, who died of the disease at just 40.Since her death in 2022, the Bowel Babe fund, a charity set up in honour of Dame Deborah and tasked with funding cancer research projects, has raised more than £20 million. Dame Deborah James, nicknamed the 'bowel babe' raised more than £20mn for Cancer Research and is credited for increasing awareness of the disease, which killed her in 2022 aged 40Every year, around 44,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK. The disease, also known as colorectal cancer, kills around 17,000 over the same time period. Obesity, lack of exercise and alcohol have all been shown, over time, to raise the risk of the disease.And, until recently, all research suggested the chances of developing bowel cancer rises with age.For this reason, the NHS screens those between 50 and 74 for bowel cancer. This involves a biannual at-home poo test, called a faecal immunochemical test (FIT).However, studies show that, in recent decades, younger patients are increasingly developing the deadly disease. In Britain, those under 49 today are around 50 per cent more likely to develop bowel cancer than people of the same age in the early 1990s.For the new study - published in the journal Cancer - researchers matched 1,221 patients who had been diagnosed with bowel cancer before the age of 39 with 61,000 cancer-free controls. Results showed that men were around a third more likely to develop the disease before the age of 50 than women, consistent with existing trends. They argue this may be because higher levels of free testosterone - a male sex hormone which drops with age - have been linked to an increased risk of the disease.