Hearty Appetite during Childhood Linked with Obesity

Babies with a good appetite might have higher risk of developing obesity later in life, according to new research.

Two new studies published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics show that babies with a hearty appetite grow faster in early stages of life. Their desire to eat more might be genetic and could contribute to weight gain in the future,HealthDay reported.

"Obesity is a major issue in child health. Identifying factors that promote or protect against weight gain could help identify targets for obesity intervention and prevention in future. These findings are extremely powerful because we were comparing children of the same age and same sex growing up in the same family in order to reveal the role that appetite plays in infant growth," said Professor Jane Wardle, lead author of the study from the UCL Health Behaviour Research Centre.

For the first study, researchers analyzed data from non-identical, same-sex twins born in the U.K. in 2007. They looked at two main components of appetite; satiety responsiveness (a lower urge to eat due to 'fullness' signals from brain) and food responsiveness (the desire to eat after smelling or looking at food), according to a news release from University College London.

The research showed that babies with a greater appetite - higher FR and lower SR- grew faster and were heavier than their twin.

"It might make life easy to have a baby with a hearty appetite, but as she grows up, parents may need to be alert for tendencies to be somewhat over-responsive to food cues in the environment, or somewhat unresponsive to fullness. This behaviour could put her at risk of gaining weight faster than is good for her," said Wardle.

The second study was based on data from 2,258 children born in the U.K. between 1994 and 1996. Participants were about ten years old at the start of the study. Researchers created a polygenic obesity risk score (PRS) for each participant. The PRS score indicated the child's risk of obesity.

Researchers found that children with higher PRS had a larger BMI.

"But more importantly, we also found that these children were more likely to have low satiety responsiveness," said Dr Clare Llewellyn, lead author from the UCL Health Behaviour Research Centre.