Read Online First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bee Wilson
Tags: science, Food Science
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These cravings are a function of prior experience. One or other cheese may trigger a recognition in us that we cannot necessarily put into words. Zajonc later observed this phenomenon of “mere exposure” at work across cultures and species.
It’s a truism that we know what we like and we like what we know. If you ask young children which foods they most detest, they tend to be the ones they have never actually tasted, often vegetables. To an adult, this sounds crazy: you can’t know if you hate something until you have tasted it. “Go on—you might like it!” I find myself urging, ineffectually, at the dinner table. But to a child, there is nothing paradoxical in saying: “I don’t like it—I never tried it!” The foods that ranked highly on the “never tried” list of a group of 70 American eight-year-olds included avocado (49/70 had never tried it), beets (48), prunes (43), collard greens (49), rye bread (43), lima beans (39), radishes (38), and fried liver (55).
The children’s book Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban is about precisely this dilemma. Frances—a young badger—does not want to eat anything except for bread and jam. “How do you know what you’ll like if you won’t even try it?” asks her father. Eventually, her parents givein to her demands for nothing but bread and jam. She is delighted. But over time, being excluded from what the rest of the family is eating makes her sad and she craves variety. One evening, Frances begs tearfully for some spaghetti and meatballs. Her parents express surprise, because they didn’t think she liked spaghetti. “How do you know what I’ll like if you won’t even try me?” is her reply.
If liking is a consequence of familiarity, it follows that children are bound to like a narrower range of foods at first than adults, because they haven’t tried as many. Problems arise when parents interpret this temporary wariness as something permanent. This is an easy mistake to make. The key period for acquiring preferences is toddlerdom: from ages one to three. But this coincides with the time in children’s lives when they are most maddeningly, willfully reluctant to try anything new. All children suffer to a greater or lesser extent from neophobia—a fear of new foods, often novel vegetables, but also very frequently protein foods such as fish and meat. This stage reaches a peak between the ages of two and six. It probably evolved as a safety mechanism to protect us from toxins as we foraged in the wild. Now, unfortunately, it leads children away from the very foods they need to learn to like—vegetables and protein—and toward the comforting embrace of cakes, white bread, and doughnuts.
As the name suggests, neophobia isn’t just a dislike of how something tastes; it is an active fear of tasting it. In many cases, neophobia can be broken down simply by feeding the food to the child numerous times—often as many as fifteen—until the child realizes she hasn’t suffered any adverse consequences. See, the tomato didn’t kill you! See, it didn’t kill you again! Bit by bit, dislike is lessened, until one day it flips, almost comically, to enthusiasm. This has to be done over and over for each new ingredient. A child’s love of cantaloupe is no guarantee that she will like watermelon.
The biggest problem with using “mere exposure” on children is that you first have to persuade them to try the food. Exposing a child to broccoli multiple times is easier said than done. As any parent who has ever tried to feed a recalcitrant toddler will know, the best-intentioned strategies often backfire. “Eat your vegetables and you can have a sweet” is a dangerous game to play; it can make the child dislike the vegetables evenmore. Psychologists call this the overjustification effect . When a reward is offered for performing an activity, that activity is valued less. The child ends up loving sweets more, because they have become a prize.
Given that
It’s a truism that we know what we like and we like what we know. If you ask young children which foods they most detest, they tend to be the ones they have never actually tasted, often vegetables. To an adult, this sounds crazy: you can’t know if you hate something until you have tasted it. “Go on—you might like it!” I find myself urging, ineffectually, at the dinner table. But to a child, there is nothing paradoxical in saying: “I don’t like it—I never tried it!” The foods that ranked highly on the “never tried” list of a group of 70 American eight-year-olds included avocado (49/70 had never tried it), beets (48), prunes (43), collard greens (49), rye bread (43), lima beans (39), radishes (38), and fried liver (55).
The children’s book Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban is about precisely this dilemma. Frances—a young badger—does not want to eat anything except for bread and jam. “How do you know what you’ll like if you won’t even try it?” asks her father. Eventually, her parents givein to her demands for nothing but bread and jam. She is delighted. But over time, being excluded from what the rest of the family is eating makes her sad and she craves variety. One evening, Frances begs tearfully for some spaghetti and meatballs. Her parents express surprise, because they didn’t think she liked spaghetti. “How do you know what I’ll like if you won’t even try me?” is her reply.
If liking is a consequence of familiarity, it follows that children are bound to like a narrower range of foods at first than adults, because they haven’t tried as many. Problems arise when parents interpret this temporary wariness as something permanent. This is an easy mistake to make. The key period for acquiring preferences is toddlerdom: from ages one to three. But this coincides with the time in children’s lives when they are most maddeningly, willfully reluctant to try anything new. All children suffer to a greater or lesser extent from neophobia—a fear of new foods, often novel vegetables, but also very frequently protein foods such as fish and meat. This stage reaches a peak between the ages of two and six. It probably evolved as a safety mechanism to protect us from toxins as we foraged in the wild. Now, unfortunately, it leads children away from the very foods they need to learn to like—vegetables and protein—and toward the comforting embrace of cakes, white bread, and doughnuts.
As the name suggests, neophobia isn’t just a dislike of how something tastes; it is an active fear of tasting it. In many cases, neophobia can be broken down simply by feeding the food to the child numerous times—often as many as fifteen—until the child realizes she hasn’t suffered any adverse consequences. See, the tomato didn’t kill you! See, it didn’t kill you again! Bit by bit, dislike is lessened, until one day it flips, almost comically, to enthusiasm. This has to be done over and over for each new ingredient. A child’s love of cantaloupe is no guarantee that she will like watermelon.
The biggest problem with using “mere exposure” on children is that you first have to persuade them to try the food. Exposing a child to broccoli multiple times is easier said than done. As any parent who has ever tried to feed a recalcitrant toddler will know, the best-intentioned strategies often backfire. “Eat your vegetables and you can have a sweet” is a dangerous game to play; it can make the child dislike the vegetables evenmore. Psychologists call this the overjustification effect . When a reward is offered for performing an activity, that activity is valued less. The child ends up loving sweets more, because they have become a prize.
Given that
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