Baby Babble

Picky, Picky, Picky

Your child turns his nose up at broccoli and spinach. In fact, he won't eat anything but macaroni and cheese. Whose fault is that?

Well, yours, sort of. According to Dr. Lucy Cooke of the University College London, food fussiness is mostly genetic. Reporting in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Cooke found that a person's genes—rather than his or her environment, or the way the cauliflower is cooked—are mostly responsible for determining food preferences.

Dr. Cooke came to this conclusion by studying twins. Identical twins—who share the same genetic makeup—tended to have the same food preferences, as compared to non-identical twins, whose genes are dissimilar.

In some children, pickiness can become food neophobia, a fear of new foods. Fortunately, most children grow out of this malady. In the meantime, researchers say that repeated exposure to new foods can break down a child's resistance and teach her that new foods can be just as enjoyable as chicken nuggets and noodles.

Do you have a picky eater in your family? We'd love to hear your tales from the family table and how you handle the problem.  Tell us your story by clicking onto "comments" just below.

Kid refusing to try new food? It's not his fault

Researchers in the United Kingdom undertook an important task recently: finding out what makes kids refuse to try something new to eat.  Turns out, the problem is at least partly genetic.  They figured this out by studying twins, determining that the rate of food refusal was the same if you come from the same gene pool.

That's no excuse for parents to stop trying to get their children to eat their broccoli.  The researchers in this study are quick to point out that repeated attempts will eventually wear the child down. Once they try it, children are likely to like it. (Okay, but we think brussel sprouts are probably an exception.)

Turns out the reluctance to try new foods has its own name, "food neophobia," and animals and humans alike seem to have evolved to be this way.  It helped us all to avoid eating toxic foods, back when we were in the wild.

The study's results are printed in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, August 2007