Phood Phobias
The ultimate food snobbery seems to be the conceit held by some parents that their children have sophisticated tastes in food. ‘Tiffany just loves sushi!” or “Jason can’t bear his duck breast overdone!” Parents project on children – nowhere more so than in the area of culinary refinement. There is a double claim to distinction here. The first is that the household in question maintains a very elevated level of cuisine; the second is that the children of the house recognize and appreciate this. Most of these parents will experience a profound disappointment when their precocious gourmets suddenly turn into monovores.
Children will eat almost anything if exposed to it at an early enough age – they have to survive after all. At a certain point coinciding with increased mobility a sudden conservatism sets in. Some of this is obviously an evolved protection. When babies can walk around they become vulnerable to accidental poisoning. Since equatorial regions contain a variety of deadly fruits and seeds, an unwillingness to eat unfamiliar vegetables would be strongly favored by natural selection. It is a commonplace that vegetables are anathema for all children. Our two teenagers will still not eat any squash, and are notably unenthusiastic about most other vegetables. Their distaste for mushrooms is completely explained by natural selection. Oddly, the general reluctance extends to new foods offered by parents, who presumably are trustworthy and in evolutionary terms are on the children’s side. Most infant palates suddenly become rigidly conservative and not very subtle. Our children, when faced with risotto, would wail “Not sticky rice again!” Their ideal dinner for many years was waffles and a peculiar kind of frozen fruit heated into a viscous sauce. This still creeps on to the menu from time to time when I am out of town. A close relative who is fine cook and keeps a varied and interesting table is forced to make two versions of Bolognese sauce, the one for her children excluding not only chicken liver (understandable) but also carrots. These same children have exquisitely discriminating senses used to detect slight occurrences of any of an extensive list of forbidden ingredients. A dish will be spurned on the suspicion that it contains parmesan cheese, often when it is some distance from the table.
The distaste for new foods usually declines as children grow up. Most adults have some foods they will refuse to eat, probably also a survival instinct. I like to think that my reluctance to eat brains – and I will eat almost anything else – is an ancient protection against BSE. Many adults, though, retain their childish prejudices intact. What you don’t eat by forty you probably will reject forever, and some adults resolutely refuse to try new things. It is often tempting to say, as to a child “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tasted it?” Frequent traveler in Asia will often be asked how they manage to eat the food. The reply that is it almost always very good is met with scepticism.
Beyond their children's early years if parents make conscious moves to introduce a child to alternative foods an open-minded attitude will gradually develop. These moves include taking children frequently to restaurants, introducing new foods and getting children involved in the process of cooking.
If parents completely skip one class of food they raise an adult who “doesn’t eat” fish/celery/carrots/offal… The prejudice against offal is common since it disappeared from American childhood. I had a boss once, an extremely intelligent and cultivated Frenchman, who would rigorously interrogate a waiter to ensure that no trace of fish appeared in any of his food, yet was completely unable to state when he had ever eaten fish and what his reaction had been. There is seldom logic in this. Another colleague will eat no fish at all, except tuna, cooked fashionably rare, and clams. Some distastes are associated with hardship. An acquaintance of mine served as advance reconnaissance in Vietnam and was forced to eat such a wide range of food as a matter of survival that he is now strictly a meat and potatoes person. In Ireland, shellfish was associated in the minds of older people in the country with lack of alternatives and is known as “famine-food”, a race memory dating back to the 1850s.
French children do seem to have been exposed to a greater range and variety of foods and consequently have fewer blind spots, my former boss notwithstanding.
Few of us can claim to be truly open-minded. I have tried, and been repulsed, by a certain fried insect considered a great delicacy in Venezuela. I would certainly blanch at the live cobra heart that Anthony Bourdain was presented in The Cook’s Tour, but perhaps if it was part of a lucrative television series I might force it past the gag reflex.
Fashion is a powerful opener of the mind. The numerous patrons of sushi bars surely never saw it as a child. Sushi has the virtues of being expensive and fashionable, which kidneys and liver do not share. Many of us were exposed to seriously bad cooking as a child and had to be reintroduced as adults to certain foods prepared correctly. There is some economic and ecological aspect to this since few societies can afford to eat as much meat as often as we do in the developed West. For the consumer a varied diet is definitely thought of as more healthy. The avoidance of embarrassment when traveling in other cultures is a further advantage. Surely the main benefit of being a true omnivore is that life is more interesting and enriching. However, having a family willing to eat many foods doesn’t seem to make it easier to resolve the perennial problem of what to have for dinner.
Children will eat almost anything if exposed to it at an early enough age – they have to survive after all. At a certain point coinciding with increased mobility a sudden conservatism sets in. Some of this is obviously an evolved protection. When babies can walk around they become vulnerable to accidental poisoning. Since equatorial regions contain a variety of deadly fruits and seeds, an unwillingness to eat unfamiliar vegetables would be strongly favored by natural selection. It is a commonplace that vegetables are anathema for all children. Our two teenagers will still not eat any squash, and are notably unenthusiastic about most other vegetables. Their distaste for mushrooms is completely explained by natural selection. Oddly, the general reluctance extends to new foods offered by parents, who presumably are trustworthy and in evolutionary terms are on the children’s side. Most infant palates suddenly become rigidly conservative and not very subtle. Our children, when faced with risotto, would wail “Not sticky rice again!” Their ideal dinner for many years was waffles and a peculiar kind of frozen fruit heated into a viscous sauce. This still creeps on to the menu from time to time when I am out of town. A close relative who is fine cook and keeps a varied and interesting table is forced to make two versions of Bolognese sauce, the one for her children excluding not only chicken liver (understandable) but also carrots. These same children have exquisitely discriminating senses used to detect slight occurrences of any of an extensive list of forbidden ingredients. A dish will be spurned on the suspicion that it contains parmesan cheese, often when it is some distance from the table.
The distaste for new foods usually declines as children grow up. Most adults have some foods they will refuse to eat, probably also a survival instinct. I like to think that my reluctance to eat brains – and I will eat almost anything else – is an ancient protection against BSE. Many adults, though, retain their childish prejudices intact. What you don’t eat by forty you probably will reject forever, and some adults resolutely refuse to try new things. It is often tempting to say, as to a child “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tasted it?” Frequent traveler in Asia will often be asked how they manage to eat the food. The reply that is it almost always very good is met with scepticism.
Beyond their children's early years if parents make conscious moves to introduce a child to alternative foods an open-minded attitude will gradually develop. These moves include taking children frequently to restaurants, introducing new foods and getting children involved in the process of cooking.
If parents completely skip one class of food they raise an adult who “doesn’t eat” fish/celery/carrots/offal… The prejudice against offal is common since it disappeared from American childhood. I had a boss once, an extremely intelligent and cultivated Frenchman, who would rigorously interrogate a waiter to ensure that no trace of fish appeared in any of his food, yet was completely unable to state when he had ever eaten fish and what his reaction had been. There is seldom logic in this. Another colleague will eat no fish at all, except tuna, cooked fashionably rare, and clams. Some distastes are associated with hardship. An acquaintance of mine served as advance reconnaissance in Vietnam and was forced to eat such a wide range of food as a matter of survival that he is now strictly a meat and potatoes person. In Ireland, shellfish was associated in the minds of older people in the country with lack of alternatives and is known as “famine-food”, a race memory dating back to the 1850s.
French children do seem to have been exposed to a greater range and variety of foods and consequently have fewer blind spots, my former boss notwithstanding.
Few of us can claim to be truly open-minded. I have tried, and been repulsed, by a certain fried insect considered a great delicacy in Venezuela. I would certainly blanch at the live cobra heart that Anthony Bourdain was presented in The Cook’s Tour, but perhaps if it was part of a lucrative television series I might force it past the gag reflex.
Fashion is a powerful opener of the mind. The numerous patrons of sushi bars surely never saw it as a child. Sushi has the virtues of being expensive and fashionable, which kidneys and liver do not share. Many of us were exposed to seriously bad cooking as a child and had to be reintroduced as adults to certain foods prepared correctly. There is some economic and ecological aspect to this since few societies can afford to eat as much meat as often as we do in the developed West. For the consumer a varied diet is definitely thought of as more healthy. The avoidance of embarrassment when traveling in other cultures is a further advantage. Surely the main benefit of being a true omnivore is that life is more interesting and enriching. However, having a family willing to eat many foods doesn’t seem to make it easier to resolve the perennial problem of what to have for dinner.
posted by William @ 6:23 AM
1 Comments:
Waffles with Mixed Berry does not "creep" onto the menu - it skips happily, whistling all the while.
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