What are the causes of individual differences in food consumption and are they modified by personality?

This paper reports, for 1613 Australian twin pairs aged 18-26 yr, the components of variance in self-reported high fat, salt and fibre food consumption, and the influence of personality on this consumption. Individual environment is the most influential factor and most of the familial influence on variance in consumption of high fat and salt food was explained by a common set of genes. Weak associations were found between personality and food consumption variables. The set of genes influencing variance in the social conformity (EPQ-R-S lie scale) personality trait made a small contribution to the genetic effects influencing consumption of fatty and salty food. We did not find evidence to support recently reported positive association between extraversion and salt consumption nor negative associations between neuroticism and psychoticism, and fat consumption. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd