Genetically carnivorous?

Twin studies are often used to probe the relative contributions of nature and nurture - that is, heredity and environment - to behavioral and other traits. The results can be eerie at times; the popular and scientific literature are rife with descriptions of twins who are separated at birth and meet decades later to find that they have followed the exact same career paths, have the same likes and dislikes, and have similar personality traits.

How about food preferences? Researchers in England surveyed the parents of hundreds of sets of identical and fraternal to determine the heritability of food preference. The results? Kids are more likely to inherit a taste for fish or meat, while preferences for vegetables - and dessert(!?) - are more heavily influenced by availability and/or parental choice.

Does this mean we can breed out vegans?

Believe it or not, this research does have a good purpose. The leader of the research group, Professor Jane Wardle of the Health Behavior Unit at University College London, is keenly interested in what shapes children's food preferences so as to better understand why kids diets are so, well, bad. If you can mold their diet when they're young, maybe you can keep them from getting cancer and heart disease later.

[Check out Yahoo for more, but if you really want to get to the meat of the story, check out Prof. Wardle's UCL faculty page.]