The thing you are seeking to recover is not just the flavor in itself, but all the things that went with it: your family sitting round the table, the feeling of being cared for, the freedom from responsibility.

But in these vast quantities, the milk leaves children anemic (because calcium in the cow’s milk blocks the absorption of iron) and badly constipated, not to mention at risk for obesity from the excess calories. The constipation and the fact that the milk is so filling leave the children with little appetite for proper meals. As a result, they fail

Her work has taught her that whether clients change their diet or not can come down to something as apparently trivial as how they are spoken to by members of the medical profession.

Genes do make a difference—to the foods we like, the way we taste them, and even how much we enjoy eating—but they turn out to be much less significant than the environment in which we learn to eat those foods.

In contrast to all the other things we work on in life that are far less likely to increase our well-being—including dieting—it is astonishing how little effort we put into changing our eating preferences for the better. There is every indication that the basic methods of eating better—increasing variety, including more plant foods, structuring mea

When a dietician hears the first inklings of “change talk,” says Pearson, he should not hurry the person on to the practicalities of dieting or an exercise program, but try to capture the desire for change in such a way that the patient can hear what she has said. The dietician’s job is not to persuade, but to strengthen someone’s own desire for ch

Some took this rejection as a sign that children are naturally inclined to prefer “kid food” to wholesome home-cooked meals. The real lesson, however, is that for dietary reform to be effective, it must go hand in hand with changes in the way that individuals learn to eat.

Taste is identity.

When children actually enjoy vegetables—plus a range of whole foods from all the other nutrient groups—half the battles over dinner disappear. Most parents see the aim of feeding as getting as much wholesome food into a child as possible. We focus too much on short-term quantity—kidding ourselves that if they are pacified with enough baby rice they