Why Are Thin People Not Fat? (16 of 29)

Why Are Thin People Not Fat?

As a psychologist I've always been very interested in eating behaviour, and specifically the question of why some people seem to eat more than they strictly need to fulfil their energy requirements.
People often assume that the answer to that is just willpower or self-control, but I think there's more to it than that.
Professor Jane Wardle has been investigating why some people persistently eat more than they really need to.
She's come to the Hopes and Dreams Nursery in North London to repeat one of her recent experiments.

The idea of this study is to see how responsive people are, children are in this case, to food that's put in front of them at a time when actually they're fairly full.
The experiment starts after lunch, with colouring.
I'd quite like to check that from their point of view they do feel full.
Empty, half full or full? Do you think your tummy's full?
CHILD: I had two.
So they choose which of these figures is how they feel, and I think pretty well all the ones I've heard talking have said they feel very full.
Now they're all being handed a little plate, or quite a big plate actually, of party-type food, and each child's told they can eat the food, or they can colour, or they can do a bit of each as they choose.
Each plate of food contains 340 calories' worth of chocolate, cakes and biscuits, cut into small pieces.
To put this in perspective, that's approximately a quarter of these children's average daily requirement of calories.