Food fussiness and food neophobia share a common etiology in early childhood

Abstract

Background‘Food fussiness’ (FF) is the tendency to be highly selective about which foods one is willing to eat, and emerges in early childhood; ‘food neophobia’ (FN) is a closely related characteristic but specifically refers to rejection of unfamiliar food. These behaviors are associated, but the extent to which their etiological architecture overlaps is unknown. The objective of this study was to quantify the relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences to variation in FF and FN in early childhood; and to establish the extent to which they share common genetic and environmental influences.MethodParticipants were 1,921 families with 16‐month‐old twins from the Gemini birth cohort. Parents completed the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire which included three FF items and four FN items. Bivariate quantitative genetic modeling was used to quantify: (a) genetic and environmental contributions to variation in FF and FN; and (b) the extent to which genetic or environmental influences on FF and FN are shared across the traits.ResultsFood fussiness and FN were strongly correlated (r = .72, p < .001). Proportions of variation in FF were equally explained by genetic (.46; 95% CI: 0.41–0.52) and shared environmental influences (.46; 95% CI: 0.41–0.51). Shared environmental effects accounted for a significantly lower proportion of variation in FN (.22; 95% CI: 0.14–0.30), but genetic influences were not significantly different from those on FF (.58, 95% CI: 0.50–0.67). FF and FN largely shared a common etiology, indicated by high genetic (.73; 95% CI: 0.67–0.78) and shared environmental correlations (.78; 95% CI: 0.69–0.86) across the two traits.ConclusionsFood fussiness and FN both show considerable heritability at 16 months but shared environmental factors, for example the home environment, influenced more interindividual differences in the expression of FF than in FN. FF and FN largely share a common etiology.

Prevalence of picky eating behavior and its impact on growth in preschool children

“…3,7,9,15 In the present study, picky eaters with behaviors related to choosing a limited variety of foods had a lower quality of diet for some micronutrients, but not energy. 16 Birch and Marlin found that as the number of exposures to a food increased, the child's preference for that food increased.…”

Emotional eating is learned not inherited in children, regardless of obesity risk

“…Data from the Gemini twin study (2402 families; 4804 twins) showed that both EOE and EUE are shaped primarily by the shared family environment, not by genes, in early childhood. This contrasts strongly with other eating behaviours found to be under substantial genetic control in early life . Replication is an essential part of scientific progress , and here we aimed to verify the strong environmental component to child EOE and EUE in a sample selected for high and low obesity risk.…”

Understanding Food Fussiness and Its Implications for Food Choice, Health, Weight and Interventions in Young Children: The Impact of Professor Jane Wardle

“…nutritional benefit vs. risk of harm). Moreover, this food group order is seen in the susceptibility of foods to fussiness and neophobia [13] or, in reverse, to food enjoyment: thus, it is not surprising that there is evidence for genetic influence on these eating tendencies (see below) [14][15][16]. By comparison, a recent study of 2865 twins aged 18-19 years [17] found that, as children grow into young adults and experience increasing independence in eating and food choice, the unique environment experienced by each individual becomes more influential on preference patterns within food groups, although heritability still has a moderate influence, ranging from 32% to 54% across food groups.…”