Fidgety eating is primarily influenced by genes and is a stable trait that lasts from childhood to early adolescence, finds MQ supported eating disorder research at UCL, King’s College London and the University of Leeds.
The study, published in the Journal of child psychology and psychiatry compared the results of a survey of parents with identical and non-identical twins in England and Wales from the ages of 16 months to 13 years.
The research team found that average levels of food irritability were relatively stable during this period, peaking around age seven and declining slightly after that.
They concluded that genetic differences in the population accounted for 60% of the variation in food concern at 16 months, increasing to 74% and more between the ages of three and 13 years.
Environmental factors shared between twins, such as the types of foods eaten at home, were found to be significant only in childhood, while environmental factors unique to each twin (i.e., not shared by co-twins), as individual personal experiences. (e.g., having different friends), became more influential in later years.
Food restlessness describes the tendency to eat a small variety of foods, due to selectivity regarding textures or flavors, or a reluctance to try new foods.
Lead author and MQ academic Dr Zeynep Nas from UCL said: “Food restlessness is common among children and can be a major source of anxiety for parents and carers, who often blame themselves. themselves for this behavior or are blamed by others.
“We hope that our finding that restlessness about eating is largely innate can help alleviate parental guilt. This behavior is not the result of parenting.
“Our study also shows that restless eating is not necessarily just a ‘phase,’ but can follow a persistent trajectory.”
The research team analyzed data from 1,927 pairs of twins from the UCL-led Gemini study, the largest twin cohort ever created to study genetic and environmental contributions to early growth.
Parents completed questionnaires about their children’s eating behaviors when they were 16 months, three, five, seven, and 13 years old.
To separate genetics from environmental influences, the researchers compared the similarity in picky eating behavior between pairs of non-identical twins, who share 50% of their genes, with the similarity between pairs of identical twins, who share 100%. of their genes.
They found that pairs of non-identical twins were much less similar in their picky eating behavior than pairs of identical twins, indicating a strong genetic influence.
The team also found that pairs of identical twins became more different from each other in their eating problems as they grew older, indicating an increase in the role of single environmental factors at older ages. (Any differences between pairs of identical twins are due to unique environmental factors, since pairs of identical twins share both their genes and certain aspects of their environment that make them more similar to each other.)
Lead author and MQ member Professor Clare Llewellyn said: “While genetic factors are the predominant influence on food anxiety, the environment also plays a supporting role.
“Shared environmental factors, such as sitting together as a family to eat, may be significant only in childhood. “This suggests that interventions to help children eat a wider variety of foods, such as repeatedly exposing them to the same foods regularly and offering a variety of fruits and vegetables, may be more effective in the early years.”
The researchers estimated that single environmental factors accounted for about a quarter of the individual differences among children in fussy eating between ages seven and 13.
Meanwhile, shared environmental factors accounted for a quarter of the individual differences between children in food concern at 16 months, with a negligible effect in later years.
Lead author Dr Alison Fildes (University of Leeds) said: “Although fussy eating has a strong genetic component and can extend beyond early childhood, this does not mean it is fixed. “Parents can continue to support their children to eat a wide variety of foods throughout childhood and adolescence, but peers and friends may become a more important influence on children’s diets as they reach adolescence.”
Among the limitations of the study, the researchers noted that there were fewer participants at age seven (703 children) compared to other time points and that the study sample had a large proportion of white British households from higher socioeconomic backgrounds compared to the population. General of England and Wales.
In the future, the team said, research should focus on non-Western populations where food culture, parental feeding practices and food security may be quite different.
The study involved researchers from UCL Behavioral Science & Health, the University of Leeds, King’s College London, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and the University of Cambridge.
