Genetic and environmental influences on eating behavior: the Swedish Young Male Twins Study.
BACKGROUND
Eating behavior may be implicated in the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity, presumably in relation to easy access to energy-dense and highly palatable foods.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of the present study was to disentangle genetic and environmental influences on eating behavior in a population-based cohort of male twins.


METHODS
The study included 326 dizygotic and 456 monozygotic male twin pairs aged 23-29 y from Sweden. The revised 21-item version of the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21) was used to assess eating behavior. This validated instrument consists of 3 dimensions: cognitive restraint, emotional eating, and uncontrolled eating. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the heritability of eating behavior.


RESULTS
Cognitive restraint was the only TFEQ-R21 scale that significantly correlated with BMI (r = 0.39, P < 0.0001). The best-fitted models gave a heritability of 59% (95% CI: 52%, 66%) for cognitive restraint, 60% (95% CI: 52%, 67%) for emotional eating, and 45% (95% CI: 36%, 53%) for uncontrolled eating.


CONCLUSIONS
These results show the great importance of genetic factors in the eating behavior of a large, unselected population of young adult male twins. Nonshared environmental factors were also important, whereas shared environmental factors did not contribute to eating behavior.
Tholin
Sanna
S
Division of Epidemiology, Stockholm Centre of Public Health, Sweden.
Rasmussen
Finn
F
Tynelius
Per
P
Karlsson
Jan
J
D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D003071:Cognition; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004200:Diseases in Twins; D004435:Eating / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology; D011594:Psychometrics; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic; D049629:Waist-Hip Ratio