I'm reading a story in today's NYT about kids being picky eaters:
A week's worth of dinners for young Fiona Jacobson looks like this: Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. French fries. Noodles. On the seventh day, the 5-year-old from Forest Hills, Queens, might indulge in a piece of pizza crust, with no sauce or cheese.
Ok, fine, can kind of relate. Kids are picky eaters. We've got a two-year-old. Check.
The main point of the article, however, was this:
Researchers examined the eating habits of 5,390 pairs of twins between 8 and 11 years old and found children’s aversions to trying new foods are mostly inherited.The message to parents: It’s not your cooking, it’s your genes.
Ummm, ok... fine...
But not really.
Let me go off if you will.
The problem with this study is that the article misinterprets it. The study says 78% is genetic. It says 22% is environmental. That 22% is huge. Think of it in these terms. Your water is 78% clean and 22% dirty. Or your flour is 78% pure...or your meat is 78% lean... you get the point....
My concern is that it very much feels like we are getting to the point where the answer to any problem is "it is genetic"? ...where nothing is anyone's fault.... where there is an excuse for everything. That just isn't the case.
(And no, this isn't terribly well argued)
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I'm always delighted be a comfort. Try to stay calm and not dwell on where the scary nutrition studies are leading mankind. It's hardly the earth-shattering result you seem to think. Just FYI, below is a summary from the actual paper. (If you like this, I have a wonderful paper on innate behavior in the laughing gull, Larus atricilla.)
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 factors.
Conclusions: Neophobia appears to be a heritable trait, but almost a quarter of the phenotypic variation is accounted for by nonshared environmental factors. An important aim for future research is the identification of influential aspects of the environment specific to individual children.
Kind of off the subject, but I can't help but wonder if this is a newly developed trend simply because through out history, most humans haven't had a wide variety of food to eat, nor much in terms of quantity.
What I'm saying is that eating the same food every meal, day after day wasn't that strange for people (there is a reason certain things are called staples). Strange new foods were for special occasions - not to be eaten everyday.
*shrug* Maybe it's not our kids that are strange, but us.
SkipChurch:
The title of the thread is, "Do Genetics Excuse Everything?"
My post was EXACTLY on point, thank you very much.
Larry, yes, your post was on point. The idea that some proclivities are heritable is old news so I can't see what all the distress is about-- as if the inherited aversion to new foods on the part of children is essentially a moral issue. Lots of wacky thinking going on, as far as I'm concerned. It's well known (for example) that the ability to taste bitterness is broccoli is inherited, and _surprise, surprise_ leads to an aversion to broccoli in some people. "Don't Care For Broccoli? A Bitter Taste Receptor Gene's Variation Suggests An Evolutionary Excuse."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060918165721.htm
Lactose intolerance is heritable. This is news? Is this is a cause for a big moral-righteousness freakout? I just can't see it.
By the way, your idea that the 78% heritability of the Cooke study cited in the NYT is high is supported by the Finnish study I mentioned where the heritability estimate for food neophobia was between 66% and 69% (Finnish and British families and twin pairs were included in this study). But the Cooke study did have a very much larger sample size (5390 pairs vs 468 pairs in the Kaapila study).
Maybe that accounts for my extreme (and I mean EXTREME, as in George H.W. Bush extreme) distaste for broccoli. Just the smell makes me want to upchuck.
But I always thought it was just a moral failing of not wanting to take care of my health. So what do I know?
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