A new study claims that children that are picky eaters could grow up to be depressed and anxious.
The study found that in select cases, preschool-aged children that were extremely picky eaters could grow up to develop the above mentioned problems. However, the children had to be so picky as to even dislike being near certain foods and only represented 3% of the study, which included 900 children ranging from ages two to five, reports the Associated Press.
“These are just sensitive kids, they see things more intently, they feel things more deeply and that’s both in their own internal experience and the world around them,” Nancy Zucke, a professor at Duke University and lead author of the study, told Today.com
. “So they have more vulnerabilities to experience taste more vividly, but also more emotions more strongly.”
Researchers in the study asked children questions during in-home interviews to determine how much of picky eaters they were. After this, the researchers returned in two years to do a following up interview with 200 of these children. Most of the children had outgrown their picky eating problems, the Associated Press notes.
