First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

There is nothing wrong with exposing a child to your preferences. Quite the opposite. The key is allowing them to reject your preferences. If they aren’t allowed to opt out, then your preference necessarily disrupts their understanding of the world. If vegetables are unwanted, then being forced to eat them would cause resentment toward the person d

After 60 years of anxious, expert-driven over-control of family meal-times, we’ve finally learnt that parents need to relax about food intake. The little saying, ‘Parent provides, child decides’

Expose children to a diverse range of whole foods, especially ones that connect them to your culinary and ethnic background. Eat the same food that you put in front of them, and show obvious enjoyment of it. Keep seasonal produce on your counter, and let the children eat any fruit that they find there, encouraging them to develop their own preferen

So it’s better to view our taste buds as an adaptation fitted to ancestral conditions that included near-starvation and apples and roast rabbit, which modern humans execute in a new context that includes cheap chocolate and constant bombardment by advertisements.