Causes of Variation in Food Preference in the Netherlands

Abstract

Our current society is characterized by an increased availability of industrially processed foods with high salt, fat and sugar content. How is it that some people prefer these unhealthy foods while others prefer more healthy foods? It is suggested that both genetic and environmental factors play a role. The aim of this study was to (1) identify food preference clusters in the largest twin-family study into food preference to date and (2) determine the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to individual differences in food preference in the Netherlands. Principal component analysis was performed to identify the preference clusters by using data on food liking/disliking from 16,541 adult multiples and their family members. To estimate the heritability of food preference, the data of 7833 twins were used in structural equation models. We identified seven food preference clusters (Meat, Fish, Fruits, Vegetables, Savory snacks, Sweet snacks and Spices) and one cluster with Drinks. Broad-sense heritability (additive [A] + dominant [D] genetic factors) for these clusters varied between .36 and .60. Dominant genetic effects were found for the clusters Fruit, Fish (males only) and Spices. Quantitative sex differences were found for Meat, Fish and Savory snacks and Drinks. To conclude, our study convincingly showed that genetic factors play a significant role in food preference. A next important step is to identify these genes because genetic vulnerability for food preference is expected to be linked to actual food consumption and different diet-related disorders.

Genetic and Environmental Influences of Dietary Indices in a UK Female Twin Cohort

“…We found that variations in overall diet quality measured by diet scores are heritable, with estimates varying between 42% (A-HEI) and 5% (HDI). These estimates are comparable with the results reported in previous studies investigating the heritability of food preference in adults (Pallister et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2016;Törnwall et al, 2014;Vink et al, 2020). In this study, the interclass correlations were always higher in MZ pairs than in DZ pairs (which suggested a strong genetic component).…”

“…None of the studies found evidence of the effects of common environmental component (C) (Pallister et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2016). A dominant genetic effect (D) was only identified for some food preferences (fruit and fish in females; Smith et al, 2016;Vink et al, 2020), but for most of the food preferences, the dominant genetic component was not detected (Smith et al, 2016;Vink et al, 2020). These results are in line with our findings.…”

“…Results of model fitting for twin correlations (see Table 3 HEI-2010 and A-HEI were associated with the risk of mortality for both cardiovascular and cancer (Harmon et al, 2015). To date, four studies have investigated the heritability of food preference in adults using either ACE or ADE models (Pallister et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2016;Törnwall et al, 2014;Vink et al, 2020).…”

“…Previous twin studies have shown that a strong genetic component defines consumption of some specific foods such as coffee and garlic (Teucher et al, 2007), beverages including soda and alcohol (de Castro, 1993), energy and macronutrient intake (Faith et al, 1999;Hasselbalch et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2013), healthy/unhealthy pattern as well as food liking/disliking (Pallister et al, 2015;Vink et al, 2020), eating behavior (Tholin et al, 2005) and variety in the overall diet (Scheibehenne et al, 2014). However, the full extent of the genetic impact on dietary indices has never been fully explored.…”

Large-scale genome-wide association study of food liking reveals genetic determinants and genetic correlations with distinct neurophysiological traits

“…Food-liking traits were collected through an online questionnaire comprising 152 items, including both foods and non-food items, which was administered in 2019 to all UK Biobank participants who had agreed to be recontacted by the study. The questionnaire is an extension of the one previously used in Pallister et al 2015 13 and Vink et al 2020 15 . Given that the questionnaire was administered online to participants pictures were removed, and we used a 9-point Hedonic scale 27 , where corresponds to "Extremely dislike" and 9 to "Extremely like".…”