Food from cradle (and before) to grave
I first encountered social historian and food writer Bee Wilson through her brilliant book, Consider the Fork, which looks at history and much more through examining the evolution of cooking, and the implements needed for this.
Wilson is my favourite kind of writer or non-fiction – extensive in research, meticulous citing to enable the interested reader to search further, and, most important of all for me – a gifted weaver of words. However erudite a writer, I need the skills a good novelist possesses – how to tell the story. Essential that this is done in non-fiction as much as in fiction, I think. Bee Wilson knows how to tell the story.
First Bite: How We Learn to Eat is a more personal, different kind of book, though all the strengths of Wilson’s writing, as detailed above, are as impeccably in place. This book takes a long and cool look at the origins of our often disordered eating habits. It is a more personal book because Wilson herself, as she explains, was a disordered eater, tending towards weight gain, attracted to the sugary, struggling with this and that diet. Meanwhile her sibling had another kind of eating disorder.
Food, in lands of plenty, has become a huge problem for man. Fashions in advice for how to change, in the developed world, the curious mixture of obesity and malnourishment which is endemic, is endlessly written about, and the legions of diet gurus all grow fat (metaphorically, one assumes) on the proceeds of the over-fed’s obsessions.
Bee Wilson’s book is not a ‘how to eat more healthily and lose weight’ diet advice or recipe book, though, if that is what a reader is looking for, there is lots of sensible advice to be found within the pages. Rather, what she does, as in earlier books, is to look at a variety of disciplines, from the medical, through to the politics of the food industry, psychology, neurochemistry, culture, sociology, scientific studies and much, much more and blend them together into a remarkably tasty, nutritious, beautifully presented casserole which will leave the reader (well, it did so for this reader), energised, with a feeling of satiety but not over-indulgence, left pleasurably digesting ideas when away from the book, and ready to come back for another meal-read.
Roasted Brussels – Learned Bitter Taste Delight Flicr, Commons Mackenzie Kosut
The book is brimming with all sorts of fascinating facts and ideas. For example, one of the reasons that so many ‘won’t eat their sprouts’ is because we are hard-wired to be alarmed by ‘bitter’. This goes back to our days as omnivorous foragers – bitter tasting plants are more likely to be ones which may be toxic to us – and some plants have evolved ‘bitter’ to deter being eaten, too. Wilson explores, however, the fact that food tastes and fads are a mixture of genetics and nurture. We each have differences in the number of papillae on our tongues, and there is no doubt that there are tastes and smells which some people perceive with ultra-sensitivity, and some cannot perceive at all. Of course, we also learn tastes in the high chair (and earlier) Forced too quickly to eat tastes we don’t like – or, perhaps, not being exposed to a wide variety of tastes during the window of opportunity when ‘new tastes’ are not experienced as threatening, and if, perhaps, we are an individual hypersensitive to ‘bitter’, an aversion to the dark green leafies may be on its way.
Later learned bitter delight
I was fascinated to read how recent (and, again, how specific in many ways to the developed Western world) the idea of ‘special food for babies’ is. There are many cultures where the weaning baby eats what the adult eats. And sometimes this includes food we might consider unsuitable for a baby – garlic, for example. And yet – one of the fascinating benefits for breast-fed babies is that the taste of breast milk is never the same, feed to feed, as breast milk will taste of what mother eats. Garlic eating cultures will have garlic habituated babies from the off!
Bee Wilson is a mother of three, and the book has a lot of focus on the developing of food likes, dislikes, disorders and orders, back from not just babyhood, but in-the-womb. A neat experiment was done with a group of mothers who were due to have an amniocentesis. They were asked to take a garlic capsule 45 minutes before the procedure – and those who had taken the capsule had amniotic fluid which smelt garlicky. The baby in the womb is already ‘tasting’ the food mother eats. Other experiments have verified these findings.
Loving my sprouts early – the other pay-off – bitter dark stuff heaven
(For the curious William Curley Chocolates So good, so expensive, so luxurious one chocolate is enough rare treat, and satisfies, when savoured)
Wilson was also very interesting about how there are cultural perceptions of different foods being suitable fare for boy children and girl children – and how damaging this is to both boys and girls. Boys are less likely to be pressured to eat up their greens than girls. Meat (and larger portions of meat) is more often given to boys. Salads and sweet things are seen to be more suitable for girls. However – from puberty, girls and women are more likely to be anaemic than men, so actually, girls could benefit from iron rich foods – eg steak, and boys should really learn to be more like girls in their ‘eating up their greens!’
I could go on and on and on about this book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the politics of the food industry, health, children’s health, – or in the collection of fascinating facts to astound your friends with!
Highly recommended
I was lucky enough to receive this as a digital review copy from the publisher, Fourth Estate, via NetGalley
First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon UK
First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon USA
Lady Fancifull 
A very interesting post. I don’t think this one’s for me, but I do like the sound of Consider the Fork. I recall seeing a review of it when it came out, but then it must have slipped off my radar (as these things do). Thanks for the reminder! 🙂
Consider the Fork is wonderful. She’s a great writer, and imparts her knowledge and research in a very lively style. A real communicator
Did I tell you I gave Consider the Fork to BigSister a year or two ago based on your recommendation? She enjoyed it a lot, from what I recall. It’s always seemed odd to me that in the small focus group that is me and my siblings, we have completely divided tastes – two for sweet, two against it, on the whole. And yet we all grew up eating the same. But I do recognise the salad for girls and steak for boys thing from my own childhood to a degree.
Sprouts are yummy. But not as yummy as those chocolates…
Oh, you are even more of a chum now I know we share a delight of the little green nubbies. They are probably my favourite ‘ordinary and unexotic’ vegetable
I’m glad BigSis enjoyed Consider the Fork, too. I want to get her book on Food Tampering, Swindled, she is such an engaging writer, and the whole politics of food is something which fascinates me.
I thoroughly recommend Curley chocolates, for when you win the lottery. They are seriously expensive, but are utterly worth it. You kind of want to spend 5 minutes eating one chocolate and make sure you are in a state of purified grace, having drunk nothing but spring water for an hour before eating it.
I didn’t know that amniotic fluid takes on the flavors/smells of foods! Super interesting! One question: since this lady has three kids, does she do that thing where she constantly uses personal anecdotes to “prove” what she’s saying?
She does use personal anecdote, though I wouldn’t say constantly – and basically she talks about her mistakes. She had one child in particular who was ‘difficult’ to wean, and she did the wrong things.
There is a LOT of really interesting material similar to the amniotic fluid stuff.
This sounds fascinating.
I’m always interested by the fact that little kids will dive into a cake they’ve never tried before but balk at a new vegetable!
Well we do gravitate to fat and sweet because these were rarer to get when we were Hunter Gatherers and good to store as reserves in our bodies when faced with frequent and likely famine, but you just don’t see adverts with millions spent on them showing children delightedly munching on carrot sticks! Wilson is very interesting on the marketing of sweet breakfast cereal aimed at little kids, an early habituation to sweet, sweet! It even starts with formula. At one point it had a vanilla favouring. Not because babies wanted that, but parents inevitably taste it, and it tastes better to THEM, so that gets bought. She cites some interesting studies with lactose free formula, for lactose intolerant babies. This formula doesn’t taste ‘ nice’ to adults. There are two basic kinds, with slightly different flavours, and whichever the baby has it will very quickly favour. They both smell unpleasant to adults. Sour cheese and hay, by all accounts! I do think there has been a big shift in what children find acceptable to eat. The advent of TV advertising I guess.
So interesting.
I fed my kids whatever we were eating but they did favour certain things and refuse others from a very young age. Thankfully now that they’re older we don’t have to deal with vegetable refusal anymore – except perhaps sprouts 😉
Fascinating! I wasn’t allowed junk food as a child and as a result I don’t have a sweet tooth at all (I am obsessed with cheese though).
Even as a child, if I was offered a chocolate I’d choose the dark ones and at classmates’ parties my big treat was access to sausage rolls 🙂
Someone did point out though that this could have backfired horribly and I could have become obsessed with sweets as an adult…
On the subject of gendered food, very occasionally I like to order a rare steak. I’ve noticed if I’m at a table with a man, the waiters always presume the steak is his order!
Like you, Madame Bibi, I did not have junk food as a child. Now I do have a (modest) sweet tooth – I spend far more time thinking about chocolate than eating it though. I was encouraged from the off to be catholic in my food tastes – as long as it was ‘home cooked’ with recognisable ingredients, I assumed it would be delicious. Funnily enough, though my mother was a wonderful, inventive, cook, her ‘failure’ was baking. She could do bread, but did not have a good pastry or cake hand. So I didn’t really get a lot of home made sweet stuff, and hunger was about eating ‘good stuff’ and chocolates (never sweets) might be a treat for when good stuff was finished. Because I expected vegetables to taste good, they did! And as an adult, still, I would never eat something like biscuits or chocolates or cake if I feel hungry. Fruit, yes, but the sweet treats stuff makes me feel wrong – jittery – unless I’m full with proper food. The feeling of needing to eat/hunger feels better than ‘I’ll have a biscuit because I’m hungry till I can get to eat proper food’ I expect that is down to conditioning. And funnily enough, there WERE things which were ‘forbidden’ – sugary drinks, CoKe/Pepsi and the like. And I do remember, in a spirit of adolescent rebellion buying a Coke because it was forbidden and all my mates were drinking it – and spitting out the disgusting tasting mouthful. I had to find other ways to rebel; my food tastes remain what I was raised on….processed food tastes, in the main, weird – too sweet, too salty, ‘chemical’ .
But I also assume, vide Wilson’s book, that I probably don’t have the ‘hypersensitive to bitter’ gene, as I loved sprouts from the off. AND sour, too. Pickled cabbage! Pickled gherkins! Pickled Beetroot! I used to drink the vinegar from jars of gherkins and beetroot. Heaven is the sweetness of beetroot with vinegar. (with a William Curley chocolate to follow)
I loved ‘Consider The Fork’ and I am intrigued by this book. Already you have my mind spinning in different directions. My mother complained that her mother always saved the best bits of Sunday joint for her brothers, but she did pretty much the same thing when she grew up. And I remember my father encouraging me to try all sorts of things, including his favourite pickles, but nobody could ever get me to try a sprout. Until a few years ago when I tried a roasted one and it was rather nice ….
I’ve just bought Swindled, her older book about the history of food adulteration, from a market place seller, and I’m looking forward to some food scandal!
Now this probably won’t appeal to you at all but I make a sprout and yoghurt soup which I’m deeply fond of – bitter and sour. It’s surprisingly delicious
Ah, my son, the green leafy avoider! And fruit! Can’t stand the texture of so many fruits! I cannot figure it out. I love all fruit and vegetables and tore through them like a house afire when I was pregnant. I adore roasted brussel sprouts with a spice mixture called Dukkah and a few red pepper flakes. My son can’t stand them. He also hates the smell of eggs and can’t swallow them without heaving.
But he can eat crunchy red cabbage and carrot salad with the lime-cumin-jalapeno dressing I make. Hates cooked cabbage.
After much pleading on my part, he’s gotten to the point where he will eat baked sweet potatoes and the ends florets of broccoli with a garlic vinaigrette.
But it’s been a lonnnnnnnng battle. And I’m worn out from the daily skirmishes. The kid hasn’t met a sweet (especially chocolate) that he doesn’t like. Oh, woe……..
He definitely dislikes bitter tastes. I’ve been told he’s a super taster because he can detect differences in a variety of brands of cranberry juice. Not sure if he can make a career out of that….
Now I might have guessed ( in a good way) that you and yours would be the rule-breakers! It will probably turn out you should have fed him a diet of sugar cereals and coca cola and then he’d have mainlined broccoli and kale!
This book sounds a fascinating! I’ll keep a look out for it.