If your child doesn’t like to vary his diet and eats very few vegetables, it’s not necessarily your fault. According to a scientific study, there is a reason!
Children’s nutrition is often complicated. They can be “picky eaters”, not willing to eat a wide variety of foods. Vegetables are, most of the time, the big problem. Parents then look for an explanation and tend to feel responsible. A study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatrytherefore looked into the subject to find the origin of this eating disorder.
These researchers were interested in eating habits, ranging from toddlers to adolescents. They analyzed data from the British Gemini study of 2,400 pairs of twins, in which parents completed questionnaires about their children’s eating habits at 16 months, 3 years, 5 years, 7 years and finally at 13 years old.
They analyzed the differences between “identical twins”, who share 100% of their genes, and “fraternal twins” who share only 50%. An interesting case study since identical twins have the same genomes and environments, while the others only have the environment in common. This allowed them to study the origins of children’s behavior around food.
They then found that identical twins had more similar eating habits than fraternal twins, paving the way for a genetic explanation. According to the study, genetic variation explained 60% of the differences in behavior around food at 16 months. This rises to 84% at 5 years, then drops to 77% at 7 years and 74% at 13 years. According to Dr. Zeynep Nas, behavioral geneticist, “the main takeaway from this work is that food irritability is not a phenomenon that arises from child rearing. It is actually genetic differences between us “.
Obviously, the environment also plays a role, in particular through the way meals are taken, with the family or not, and the foods consumed by those around us. It is around 16 months that the influence of the family cocoon is strongest. After 7 years, it is more individual experiences, particularly with friends, which take up space and contribute to the variation in relationships with food.
Dr Alison Fildes, co-author of the study at the University of Leeds, assured that despite the genetic impact, parents could still contribute to their children’s balanced diet: “Although eating disorders have a strong genetic component and may extend beyond early childhood, this does not mean that they are fixed. Parents can continue to encourage their children to eat a wide variety of foods throughout life. childhood and adolescence. The researchers hope, thanks to these results, to reduce parents’ anxiety on this subject.