University College London and King’s College London researchers have found that children carrying a high-risk version of FTO, the first gene linked to obesity in Caucasian populations, find it harder than others to tell when they are full.

The effect of the gene on appetite was the same regardless of age, sex, socioeconomic background and body mass index.

In 2007, Peninsula Medical School and Oxford University researchers found that people with two copies of the “fat” variant of the gene had a 70% higher risk of obesity than those with none. Half of white Europeans carry one copy of the variant, and one in six have two copies.