Genetic and environmental influences on children ’ s food neophobia 1 – 3
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. Design: 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