Single parents raise fatter children?

A new study in Australia has found that single parents are more likely to have overweight or obese children. 

According to news.com.au, The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare looked at 15 factors, and determined that being raised in a single parent family is the biggest risk factor for childhood obesity. 

Experts blamed low incomes, healthy food being less affordable - the study found that healthy eating costs up to 30 per cent more - and the inability to pay for participation in organised sport.

According to the study, more than 35 per cent of children from a single parent family were overweight or obese. This is compared to 24 per cent of children living in couple families. 

Separately, Fox News reports that a study in Norway shows that children from divorced homes in the country were 54 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than children from families with both parents still together. 

But the "the results do not say that divorce causes weight gain in children", said the study's author, a doctoral candidate at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. 

Sources: news.com.au, Fox News