Your Kid’s Picky Eating Probably Isn’t Your Fault, It’s Your Genetics

If you have a picky eater, you’ve probably gone through the five stages of grief at the dinner table at least once a week. You start in denial (today is totally the day they will get over their fear of ricotta cheese and eat a ravioli) and inevitably end at a state of acceptance (a cold plate of untouched ravioli, and an eagerly consumed bowl of cereal). It’s exhausting, to say the least.

While researchers have not come up with an answer for parents’ mealtime woes, they do have a reason. And turns out, it’s likely mostly not your fault — it’s your genetics.

In the new study, published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, researchers looked into the causes of childhood food fussiness. They ultimately found that genetics explained up to 86% of the differences in picky behavior among children.

So, still kind of your fault... but not consciously!

The researchers focused on pairs of twins from over 2,400 families, who chose to participate in a program run by the UK Office for National Statistics called Gemini. They collected data from the participants for over a decade, from the age of 16 months to 13 years.

The study revealed that pickiness was more similar in identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, than in non-identical twins, pointing to genetics as a key factor.

While nature does take a majority of the blame here, nurture still has some say in the matter. Once children hit toddlerhood, environmental factors like whether families sat down for dinner or what family members ate explained 15 to 26% of differences in pickiness, an influence that endured onward from 5 years old.

This environmental factor is important, because it means that food fussiness isn’t as hopeless as it may seem.

As the research showed that the environmental influence was persistent, and steadily increased over time, that leaves room for intervention in the toddler phase and through adolescence. Changes in environmental patterns could possibly help your kid expand their palette.

Experts recommend a number of ways to help children overcome food fussiness, including avoiding offering kids a replacement meal, and getting them more engaged in food by taking them grocery shopping, or letting them help you cook.

So really, we have the best of both worlds. You can blame your kid’s pickiness on their genetic makeup, but it’s also not completely hopeless to imagine that someday, with hard work and dedication, you can convince them to eat their vegetables.