Credits: Social Media
You can blame your parents for your fussy eating, study shows
A new study funded by MQ Mental Health Research has suggested that your fussy eating could have everything to do with genetics. Sorry, Mom.
We might need food to live, but eating and drinking have evolved far past health and wellness. From studies being performed on how to make a burger, to the link between National holidays and specific meals, the human race loves shoving things in their mouth.
You can blame your fussy eating on your parents… kinda
Though previous studies highlighted why some kids hate textured food, the reasoning behind fussy eating has often been drenched in mystery. Some believe it’s due to poor parental control, while others think it’s down to individualized tastes.
A new study in the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry found that it’s not a phase, and it’s not necessarily your fault. Instead, genetics are the culprit, and for kids aged three to 13 genes account for 74% of fussy eating cases.
Our study also shows that fussy eating is not necessarily just a phase, but may follow a persistent trajectory, Zeynep Nas, a researcher at the University College London and lead author of the study, said. Our study also shows that fussy eating is not necessarily just a phase, but may follow a persistent trajectory.
To conduct their study, the researchers surveyed parents with identical or non-identical twins. Twins are often used in studies because they provide an understanding of how genes factor into results, with non-identical pairs sharing 50% of their genes and identical twins sharing 100%.
Fussy eating is down to your genetic makeup, the study suggested
Through their analysis of 2,400 sets of twins enrolled in a larger study, the team found that Non-identical twins showed different eating behaviors than identical twins, which suggests a genetic component.
Admittedly, environmental factors played a bigger part as the twins aged, with seemingly unrelated factors like the number of friends affecting the subjects from ages 7 to 13.
Shared environmental factors, such as sitting down together as a family to eat meals, may only be significant in toddlerhood,” researcher Clare Llewellyn said. “This suggests that interventions to help children eat a wider range of foods, such as repeatedly exposing children to the same foods regularly and offering a variety of fruits and vegetables, maybe most effective in the very early years.”
Essentially, If you’ve got a picky-eating toddler, it might make sense to eat as a family which is also shown to improve connections.
You can’t change your genetic makeup, at least not yet, but there are things you can do to reduce your fussy eating.
Parents can continue to support their children to eat a wide variety of foods throughout childhood and into adolescence, but peers and friends might become a more important influence on childrens diets as they reach their teens, team member Alison Fildes added.
