Fussy eater? Well, it may not be your own doing as a study has found being picky with your food is a ‘stable trait’ that could be down to your genes.
Now, parents have often put their children’s fussiness to their age and the excuses seem to become less plausible the older you get.
However, researchers have found that fussy eating is mainly down to genes lasting from toddlerhood to early adolescence.
The study, which was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and funded by the mental health charity MQ Mental Health Research, looked into survey results of parents with identical or non-identical twins from the ages of 16 months all the way up to 13 years.
Led by researchers from UCL, King’s College London and the University of Leeds, it found the level of food fussiness peaked around the age of seven before slightly declining after that.
Ultimately, the experts concluded that genetic differences in those involved with the study accounted for 60 percent of the variation in food fussiness at 16 months.
But when you reach three years and all the way up to 13, well, that figure increases to 74 percent.
The study found that non-identical twin pairs were much less similar in their fussy eating than identical twins, highlighting a large genetic influence.
Lead author of the study Dr Zeynep Nas, from UCL, 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.
“Our study also shows that fussy eating is not necessarily just a ‘phase’, but may follow a persistent trajectory.”
Meanwhile, senior author Dr Clare Llewellyn, from UCL, added: “While genetic factors are the predominant influence for food fussiness, environment also plays a supporting role.
“Shared environmental factors, such as sitting down together as a family to eat meals, may only be significant in toddlerhood. 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, may be most effective in the very early years.”
And Dr Alison Fildes, from the University of Leeds, added: “Although fussy eating has a strong genetic component and can extend beyond early childhood, this doesn’t mean it is fixed.”
Dr Llewellyn went on to say that parents should continue to ‘support their children to eat a wide variety of foods’.
