BLOG | Baby tastes sway adult palates
Virtually as soon as my son Benjamin was gobbling down solids he was basically eating the same diet as my wife and I.
There are predominately three reasons why ‘Benny’ has been reared on adult food. Firstly, we asked ourselves who would voluntarily choose to eat the pureed mush marketed as baby food? Secondly, the cost of this infant cuisine is relatively expensive, compared to mashing up a few leftovers from our meals. And thirdly, we thought it would help him to develop an appetite for a wide variety of delicious foods.
Now at three years old, Benny has a far more sophisticated taste repertoire than I possessed throughout my twenties, enjoying olives, avocado, curry and just about anything and everything. On the other hand, many of his peers continue to struggle with most foods, with the obvious exceptions of chips, confectionary and processed meals which they consume with delight.
Mothers often question why our Benny will quite happily munch on a carrot when their own children would prefer to use this as a snowman’s nose. However, it’s not a mystery. Introduce a wide variety of delicacies to children early on, and they will view these foods as a normal part of their diet. Introduce sprouts, cabbage and fish later on in life, and their taste buds will simply reject these new sensations.
Latest research has now proved this. A new study has shown that childhood food memories impact greatly on our adult tastes. Smell expert Professor Tim Jacob says that flavour, a mixture of taste and smell, was inherently conservative in many people.
“We spend our formative years being fed with things that are sweet and are quite bland,” he said. “Once we have established what foods we need to survive, why change it? We often don’t want to take the risk.”
He added, “Because of the way our tastes develop, things like olives are an acquired taste but memory and emotion remain closely linked to flavour preferences throughout our lives.”
A visit to a typical Mediterranean restaurant will show all generations of the family enjoying a vast array of interesting foods at the table. Take a look round at a UK diner and you’ll probably notice the children adherently sticking to burgers, pizza and ice cream.
The UK is facing an obesity epidemic. Prevention, as they say, is the best form of cure and so perhaps we should all start our young ones as we mean them to go on. Eat well at two, and there is every chance that they will eat well at twelve, twenty two and maybe even one hundred and two.
Labels: appetite, avocado, baby food, cabbage, children, chips, confectionary, curry, delicious meals, fish, foods, infant cuisine, mothers, obesity, olives, processed meals, sprouts, taste, taste buds
Posted by: Theo Wood | 8th April 2009 |
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