Fussy Eater? It Might Be in Your Kid’s Genes

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Pulling your hair out in frustration with your finicky youngster?

Don’t blame your parenting style—genetics likely played a huge role in their eating habits, a new twin study finds.

Fussy eating is mainly influenced by genes, according to findings published Sept. 19 in the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry.

Further, finicky eating is a stable trait that lasts from toddlerhood to early adolescence, the researchers added.

Average levels of food fussiness remain relatively stable from 16 months to 13  years of age, peaking around age 7 and declining slightly after that, researchers found.

Genetic differences account for 60% of the variation in food fussiness at 16 months, and their influence increased to 74% and more as toddlers grew into tweens, results showed.

For the study, researchers tracked 2,400 sets of twins through age 13.

Parents regularly filled out questionnaires about their kids’ eating behaviors. Fussy eating is defined as a tendency to eat only a small range of foods due to dislike of certain textures or tastes, and a reluctance to try new foods.

To help tease out genetic influences, researchers compared fraternal twins, who share 50% of their genes, with identical twins who share 100% of their genes.

It turned out that fraternal twins were much less similar in their picky eating than identical twins, pointing to a large genetic influence in the behavior.

Fussy eating patterns among identical twins also started to become more different as the kids got older, indicating that environmental factors start to shape eating behaviors for tweens and teens.

“Food fussiness is common among children and can be a major source of anxiety for parents and caregivers, who often blame themselves for this behaviour or are blamed by others,” said lead researcher Zeynep Nas, a postdoctoral researcher with the University College London (UCL).

“We hope our finding that fussy eating is largely innate may help to alleviate parental blame. This behavior is not a result of parenting,” Nas added in a UCL news release. “Our study also shows that fussy eating is not necessarily just a ‘phase,’ but may follow a persistent trajectory.”

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/child-health/fussy-eater-it-might-be-in-your-kids-genes