First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

In a busy life, the organization required for regular, shared dinners can seem unattainable; even if they can manage the shopping and the cooking, parents often hesitate to assume the authority to gather everyone together to eat, never mind to insist that everyone eat the same food. But the experience of eating disorders shows that this is partly a

What children need is to develop the skills to navigate the environment for themselves. The problem with this purist version of children’s food, just as much as the unhealthy kid food, is: What happens when they grow up?

From childhood onward, our idea of fullness is heavily influenced by how much food we are offered. Large packages make it seem normal to eat large quantities.

Growing up poor can engender a lifetime of unhealthy food habits, because a narrow diet in childhood is likely to narrow your food choices as an adult, even if your income later rises. When the flavors of white bread and processed meats are linked in your memory with the warmth and authority of a parent and the camaraderie of siblings, it can feel

We assume that over time, our tastes will gradually blossom of their own accord, but with selective eating, the pattern is for tastes to get ever more closed.

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

If we learn to eat mainly as children, then the food on which we hone our eating skills is children’s food. Yet the education offered by this curious category of cuisine tends to reinforce in various ways the deep-seated belief that healthy food can never be likable.

Keith Williams believes that, with the right motivation for change, it would be possible to use taste exposure to treat selective eating at any age. The greatest obstacle is that most selective eaters—and their parents—view their condition as incurable, and therefore do not really believe there is any point in treatment. Their reluctance in the fac

Grown-ups who have been asked to recall what being force-fed was like report emotions such as anger, humiliation, and betrayal.