October 31, 2007
Family Meals Focus #20
Interpreting the news and research about feeding and eating

In the last several weeks, I have had lots of media calls about Lucy Cooke's article addressing the genetic basis for food preference¹ and Jessica Seinfeld's appearance on Oprah pushing her book, Deceptively Delicious. Lucy Cooke said food neophobia,fear of new food,is a heritable trait. Seinfeld promotes hiding vegetables in the macaroni and cheese or the chocolate cake in order to get children to eat them.

Growing out of this media storm, I have three observations:

1. Today's parents appear to be extremely concerned about children�s food selectivity.
2. It is both nature and nurture, not one or the other
3. Nothing good comes out of tricking children into eating.

1. Today's parents are concerned. Are today's children genuinely neophobic, or do parents just not understand children's normal eating behavior? Picky eating is normal; neophobia is not. Children normally are skeptical about unfamiliar food and approach it slowly. They look at new food but don't taste it, taste it but don't swallow it, eat a food enthusiastically one day and shun it the next, and rarely eat some of everything that is put before them but only 2 or 3 food items. Parents who don't understand normal child eating behavior limit menus to foods children readily accept,thus depriving them of opportunities to learn,or coerce children to eat,thus precipitating resistance that at times turns into neophobia.

2. It is both nature and nurture. With respect to nature, of course there are differences in children. Some children are exquisitely sensitive to tastes and textures, have a strong gag reflex and throw up easily. Some children are diagnosed as having sensory integration disorders, meaning they react to taste and texture. Some children are super-tasters,they can detect the bitter taste in foods including cabbage-family vegetables² and they may be more tuned into sweet and other flavors as well. Some children are temperamentally negative with respect to new experiences,including food experiences.³

However, children do not have to be handicapped by their predilections, and that brings us to nurture. Even children who have temperamental or neurological barriers set out to learn to eat the food their parents eat. Like all other children, they learn to like a variety of food, provided they have regular and unpressured opportunities to learn. That means the food matter-of-factly shows up again and again on the family table and parents eat and enjoy it. It also means that parents do not pressure children in any way to eat: they do not remind, badger, reward, applaud, or withhold dessert until the child eats her vegetables. FMF # 10 addresses parenting so children can do well with food acceptance.

3. Nothing good comes out of tricking children. Trust is a precious commodity, and tricking children takes away that trust. Children are not stupid, and sooner or later they catch on that they are being tricked. When they catch on, they feel hurt and angry and are set back in their ability to learn and grow. In parenting with food, the goal is not to get certain foods into children, but to trust them to push themselves along in learning to enjoy those foods for a lifetime.

According to reporters, parents who were told about the Cooke article expressed considerable relief that their child's food refusal was not their fault. Beyond what I just discussed, I wonder why today's parents are so upset about their children's food refusal. Are they over-concerned about their children's nutritional welfare, or are they are hanging their feelings of accomplishment on their child's eating? Rather than being a routine part of caring for self and others, meals in many homes have become an event orchestrated with extreme care and invested with emotional undertones. Whether they are foodies, environmentalists, or health-conscious super-parents, today's parents need to discover, as have generations of parents before them, that pleasing every eater with every food at every meal is simply an impossible dream.

Selected References

1. Cooke LJ, Haworth CM, Wardle J. Genetic and environmental influences on children's food neophobia. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86:428-433.

2. Drewnowski A, Henderson SA, Cockroft JE. Genetic Sensitivity to 6-n-Propylthiouracil Has No Influence on Dietary Patterns, Body Mass Indexes, or Plasma Lipid Profiles of Women. J Am Diet Assoc. 2007;107:1340-8.

3. Pliner P, Loewen ER. Temperament and food neophobia in children and their mothers. Appetite. 1997;28 :239-254.

Copyright © 2007 by Ellyn Satter. Published at www.EllynSatter.com.