There is no good data to show that this is true. Although there appears to be an innate preference for the sweet taste, there is no evidence for an innate fat preference. Children learn to dislike foods that are eaten to earn rewards and learn to prefer foods which are used as rewards. Although children's food intake is widely erratic from one meal to the next, their 24-hour intake varies very little.
Compensation occurs within the same day.
Unfortunately parents can distort this natural compensation pattern by trying to control children's intake. Adiposity, especially in girls, may reflect parental control which blocks the child from being a self-regulating eater. Both restricting and forcing food disrupts a child's self-regulating mechanism. The children who ate the most calories from the snack foods were the ones whose mothers most restricted the children's food. The scientists concluded that restricting children's access to snack food may actually promote consumption of these foods when the child is in an unrestricted setting.