Genetic and environmental influences on children's food neophobia.
BACKGROUND
Food neophobia in children has been associated with a low intake of fruit, vegetables, and protein foods. The design of effective interventions to improve children's diets would be facilitated by a better understanding of the determinants of neophobia.


OBJECTIVE
Our objective was to quantify the contribution of genetic and environmental differences to variation in child food neophobia.


METHODS
Parents of twins aged 8-11 y (n = 5390 pairs) completed questionnaires about their children's eating habits, including a measure of food neophobia.


RESULTS
The results showed that neophobia is highly heritable. The heritability estimate from model fitting was 0.78 (95% CI: 0.76, 0.79). A further 22% of the variance was explained by nonshared environmental factors, with no influence of shared environmental factors.


CONCLUSIONS
Neophobia appears to be a heritable trait, but almost a quarter of the phenotypic variation is accounted for by nonshared environmental factors. An important aim for future research is the identification of influential aspects of the environment specific to individual children.
Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom. lucy.cooke@ucl.ac.uk
Lucy J
LJ
Cooke
Claire M A
CM
Haworth
Jane
J
Wardle
D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004777:Environment; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000235:genetics* / Q000503:physiopathology; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic