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Children's meals should be monitored by parents
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The study by researchers from Pennsylvania State University involved 47 same-sex pairs of brothers and sisters.
The aim of the specialists’ experiment is to find out how a child’s excess body weight affects his or her passion for food.
It turned out that compared with children who were of normal weight for their age, their heavier siblings consumed 34% more calories if they did not receive food restrictions.
“Overweight participants in the studies did not neglect their favorite snacks when given the opportunity, even after they were full,” said lead author Tanya Kral. “These results suggest that some children are less sensitive to the body’s internal signals that control hunger and satiety. They continue to eat even after they have had enough food.”
The experiment showed that normal-weight children ate less than their siblings when food intake was not restricted or monitored.
This ability can be inherited from parents. It can also be aggravated by large amounts of food that caring parents offer the child to eat, worrying about the child not being hungry.
As ILIVE has already reported, a group of scientists from Stanford University came to the conclusion that the problem of obesity and excess weight in children may largely depend on parents who, by “overfeeding” their beloved child, provoke disruptions in the process of his normal nutrition.
During the studies, siblings were given identical portions of food, such as a dinner consisting of pasta with tomato paste, broccoli with unsweetened applesauce and 2% fat milk.
When subjects were given the opportunity to indulge in their favorite snack after dinner, the overweight children ate more readily and ate an average of 93 more calories than their siblings.
This behavior can lead to major obesity problems in the future, when it will be much more difficult to fight excess weight and eating habits.
The eating habits of overweight children are very similar. According to scientists, the reason for this may be genetic features that provoke such behavior.
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