Compared to toddlers who crave salty foods, children who mindlessly snack on cookies and cake may be more likely to wind up overweight, a U.S. study suggests.

To study what’s known as ‘eating in the absence of hunger’, researchers tracked how many sweet and salty snacks children ate just after finishing a full meal.

Children who ate the most sweets after the meal threw the biggest tantrums when the treats were taken away. These children had greater odds of gaining excess weight than kids who grazed on salty foods or didn’t put up a fuss when their snack was removed, the study found.