Two children doing their best to eat a meal of spaghetti, May 1952. Original publication: Picture … [+] Post – 5865 – There’s Simply No End To It! – pub. 17th May 1952. (Photo by Ronald Startup/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Some people are willing to eat almost all types of foods to satisfy their hunger. And some, labeled picky eaters, prefer eating the same dishes they are familiar with. As it turns out, this reluctance to eat new foods or “pickiness” is not something any individual has full control over because it is mainly a genetic trait, a new study found.
“Food fussiness describes the tendency to eat a limited range of foods, often due to pickiness regarding flavor or texture, and the reluctance to try new foods and flavors,” the study authors explained. “Food fussiness or picky eating is common and typically develops early in life (during toddlerhood) with prevalence rates ranging between 6% and 50%.”
While most children become less fussy with their food preferences as they enter adolescence, prior research has shown that a few children continue being selective about what they eat well into adulthood. Lead author of the recent study, Zeynep Nas from the UCL Behavioural Science & Health and colleagues, investigated whether the root causes of picky eating are environmental or largely due to genetic influences.
They recruited 2,400 sets of twin children and their parents who were asked to fill out questionnaires about their children’s eating habits from the time they were 16 months old to 13 years old. They observed that genetic influences played a crucial role in shaping children’s eating behaviors and acknowledged that because picky eating is a genetic trait, “interventions may be more challenging, targeted, personalized, and more intensive management may be needed while reassuring parents that they are not to blame.”
In a press release, Nas said: “Food fussiness is common among children and can be a major source of anxiety for parents and caregivers, who often blame themselves for this behavior or are blamed by others.”
“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. “Our study also shows that fussy eating is not necessarily just a ‘phase’, but may follow a persistent trajectory.”
Nas and team further emphasized in their study that the results do not necessarily suggest that picky eating or food fussiness cannot be addressed in children. After all, a healthy diet includes a diverse range of vegetables, fruits, pulses or legumes, and other protein-rich foods. And picky eating might get in the way of a child getting adequate nutrition.
The study further found that certain interventions for food fussiness could be implemented across children and during adolescence. “These findings suggest that toddlers who present with higher food fussiness are also more likely to experience greater increases in food fussiness as they mature. This is of interest not only to researchers but also to clinicians and the wider child and adolescent health community,” the researchers explained.
“Given the links between fussy eating and other physical and psychological health outcomes, including eating disorders such as avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), early detection and intervention for food fussiness in toddlerhood may reduce the expression of this behavior across development,” they added.
