Wire service reports can be found here and here and the original article by Fiona M. Breena, Robert Plominb and Jane Wardle can be viewed here.
The study is based on analysis of 214 food-preference questionnaires administered to mothers of twins (103 identical and 111 fraternal, all aged 4 or 5 years), the largest sample in comparable studies to date. Researchers grouped 77 distinct food items within four categories (meat and fish, vegetables, fruits, and deserts), and determined the extent of children's preferences for each. Comparing data on identical and fraternal twins allows researchers to tease apart the effects of genetics and environment; the purely genetic factors are statistically more likely to be shared by identical twins.
According to these findings, a child's taste for animal protein (meat and fish) is strongly inherited from his parents, while his particular taste for dessert (tho also somewhat inherited) is due more to environment. Liking of vegetables and fruits falls in between, with a taste for vegetables statistically more "hard-wired" than for fruits.
From the Discussion:
"...Using this approach, we found modest heritability estimates for liking for dessert foods, moderate heritability for fruits and vegetables, and high heritability for liking of protein foods (meat and fish)....Shared environment effects were strong for dessert foods, fruits and vegetables. This is consistent with evidence that in children, food acceptance is affected by what they see other people eating, what foods they are offered, and how parents control food intake in the home..."
Matt (a parent of twin 5-year olds) observes: So meat-loving parents are most likely to pass on this trait to their kids, whatever else they might impart...like big feet. But how kids like their fruits and veggies is less pre-determined; and whether or not they will gorge on their father's Peanut M&Ms might depend most on whether or not they can reach them.
I'm kinda liking this train of thought. Here my kids' unpredictable performance at their greens is explained, and my hiding and hoarding of sweets is fully justified! And there's an added bonus in the notion that my own taste for meat---the flesh of once-living animals---is likely sewn into my genome and indivisible. It certainly feels that way.
Interestingly, my fraternal-twin daughters are notably different from each other in their taste for meat. One loves all kinds and generally cleans the meat first off her plate. The other is indifferent or worse about most meats and generally eats her salad first. This difference seems to be supported in the study findings, as my wife is also indifferent to most meats and eats little even of her favorite kinds.
What puzzles me most is that my Young Vegan is the one who loves to hunt.
1 comment:
Rebecca, my little veggie-eater is definitely the hunter/trapper/bug-catcher of the two. My little meat-lover is the one who hugs the pets and pets the dead rabbits. So it is hard to explain.
My friend Tom C. loves meat and loves to hunt but also loves to pet the pets, raise baby birds and grow plants---generally to nurture life as well as take it. He is proof that both traits can exist in the same person and good evidence that they probably should.
But my own kids are strongly clustered in these traits. The last time I took them over to Tom's, one of them spent the whole time catching minnows (and handling them pretty rough!), and the other wanted to pet the minnows but wouldn't catch them no matter what.
I told Tom I've got one kid who is all hunt and no take-care-of and another kid who is all take-care-of and no hunt.
I can easily see that "the hunting gene" if it (or a bunch of them) exists might be entirely different than the "meat eating gene." Both sexes of chimps love meat, after all, but it's the males who chase and kill it.
Probably a strong taste for meat helps a hunter in the long run, but it doesn't necessarily follow (given that meat is typically shared among chimps, and people) that a taste for meat need spur an interest in hunting.
Makes me wonder how it all shakes out. I don't think it's sexist to point out that most modern human hunters are men... And yet---here is my vegan-leaning daughter who traps my starlings for me!
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