Genes to be Blamed for Child’s Picky Eating Habits

Children who are 4-6 months old are more welcoming to new experiences and eat any food served to them. That's when you see them putting anything and everything into their mouths. The next thing you find them doing is turning away from the food they previously loved. You panic thinking your kid is a picky eater.

Picky eating is an endless source of frustration for parents. If you think that its the food that is served on the plate that makes your kid a fussy eater, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill state that it is not your cooking skills but the child's genes that affect his/her eating habit.

According to a study conducted by Myles Faith, study lead and an associate professor of nutrition at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, genes play a significant role in children's eating habits and their tendency to avoid new food.

"In some respects, food neophobia, or the aversion to trying new foods, is similar to child temperament or personality," Faith said in a press statement. "Some children are more genetically susceptible than others to avoid new foods. However, that doesn't mean that they can't change their behaviors and become a little less picky."

The study involved 66 pairs of twins belonging to the age group of 4-7 years. They noticed that 72 percent of the variations among kids in the tendency to avoid new foods was mainly due to genes. The remaining was due to environmental factors.

Prior to this, a previous research conducted showed that 78 percent of the genetic influence was responsible for food neophobia in 8-11 year olds, and in adults, it was 69 percent of the genetic influence.

This highlighted the impact of genes on food neophobia that is constant across the developmental stages of a child.

The researchers also tried to study the association between food neophobia and body fat measures in both parent and child. They noticed that if the parent was heavier, even the child was heavy, provided that the kid avoided experimenting with new food.

The study was published in the journal Obesity.