If you are a fast-food junkie with little variation in your diet, the chances are that you ate the same way when you were two years old, according to a 20-year French study made public on Wednesday.
The first part of the study, which was carried out by the University of Burgundy in Dijon, took place between 1982 and 1999, when the researchers recorded the food selection of 418 children between the ages of two and three.
Then, between 2001 and 2002, a doctoral candidate from the National Institute of Agronomic Research, Sophie Nicklaus, looked up 341 of these children, now aged four to 22, and compared their diets with those they had when they were young.
The study found that choices made in infancy determined their future preferences.
To their surprise, researchers also found that other factors such as body weight or the profession of their parents had no effect on eating preferences.
According to Vincent Boggio of the University of Burgundy: ”There has been little work on the evolution of eating preferences, because they are hard to study over the long term. Our results have made waves, all the way to the United States.” – Sapa-DPA