The link between poor quality nutrition and childhood antisocial behavior: A genetically informative analysis

Purpose: The current study explores whether the association between poor quality nutrition and child antisocial behavior is robust to shared environmental and genetic influences. Method: Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Birth Cohort are employed, which includes a large, nationally representative sample of twin pairs. DeFries-Fulker (DF) analysis is used to test the current hypothesis. Results: The results suggest that poor quality nutrition during preschool increases the extent of antisocial behavior during elementary school after the influence of genes and the shared environment are taken into account. Conclusions: The relationship between poor quality nutrition and subsequent behavioral problems is robust to shared environmental and genetic influences, with variation in eating behaviors between twins predicting their relative likelihood of exhibiting antisocial behaviors.