The nature versus nurture debate is as old as time itself. To what extent are our characters shaped by our genes versus our upbringing? A new study by researchers from King’s College London and UCL appears to come down on the nature side of the argument. It examined what difference the ways that parents feed their children makes to their body weight. The answer appears to be next to none. Parents, unless they indulge in extreme over-feeding or starvation, do not make their children either fat or thin.
This is a difficult conclusion for many people to accept, not least when childhood obesity has become one of the greatest health problems facing developed countries. It has long been known that 80 per cent of the