If you’ve ever:
- Watched an Instagram tutorial on blending seasonal gourds into pasta sauce to get more veggies into your child’s diet and thought, “Wait, kids eat sauce?”
- Asked your pediatrician how long your child can survive solely on blueberries. (“No, I mean literally just blueberries.”)
- Begged your child to at least lick the chicken nugget.
Then take heed.
A new study about children trying valiantly to survive on crackers, air and your last wisp of gentle parenting suggests picky eating is largely explained by genetics — and the researchers say they hope the findings will help alleviate parental blame.
The study, published Sept. 19 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, surveyed the parents of 4,804 twins born in the U.K. in 2007 from ages 16 months to 13 years.
By comparing identical and fraternal twins, the authors found that genetics largely accounted for the individual differences in what they call “food fussiness” at all ages. Genetics accounted for 60 per cent of the variation of food fussiness at 16 months, and rose to 74 to…
