INHERITANCE OF SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON EATING AND DRINKING IN HUMANS

The heritability of social effects on food and fluid intake was invest igated with 110 identical and 102 fraternal same-sex and 53 fraternal mixed gender adult twin pairs who were paid to maintain 7-day food int ake diaries. Linear structural modeling revealed significant genetic i nfluences on the overall number and type of eating companions, and the magnitude of the correlations and slopes of the best fitting regressi on line between the number of people present at the meals and the amou nts of nutrients ingested. These results suggest that both the amount of variance in meal size accounted for by the presence of other people and the amount of influence of each of these companions on the amount eaten are significantly affected by the genes. This suggests that res ponses to environmental stimuli are influenced by the genes and become part of the total package of genetically determined physiological and psychological processes that regulate energy balance. Copyright (C) 1 997 Elsevier Science Inc.