Dining habits are governed by your genes, a study of identical and fraternal twins has revealed.
鈥淐hanging these factors is equivalent to trying to change one鈥檚 breathing,鈥� says John de Castro, a behavioural scientist at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
He reasoned that if genes exert a strong influence on eating patterns, adult identical twins would have very similar dining preferences even if they live apart. Such similarities would be less common in fraternal twins, who do not share identical genes.
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To test this theory, de Castro鈥檚 team asked 110 adult identical twins and 155 adult fraternal twins to keep a seven-day diary of all their meals and snacks, as well as how hungry they felt before and after each meal. They also recorded how many people they dined with.
The diaries revealed that identical twins were nearly twice as likely to enjoy similar dining habits as fraternal twins, even though all lived apart. The identical twins showed uncanny similarities in the time of day they preferred to dine, how much they ate, and their feelings of hunger and satiety before and after the meal. They also had similar preferences for how many dining companions they liked having around.
The fraternal twins did not share similar eating habits. This means that upbringing is unlikely to have much effect on dining tastes, says de Castro. 鈥淚 have yet to see evidence that early environment and upbringing have any influence at all on what people eat as adults,鈥� he says.
Journal reference: Nutrition (vol 17, p 713)