A Unique Child: Nutrition - A matter of taste

Getting young children to eat a variety of foods to make up a healthy, balanced diet can sometimes feel like a challenge, and I am sure in nursery we have all had children who won’t touch a vegetable or only want to eat pasta.

I have just read a fascinating book by Bea Wilson in which she explores the complex nature of our relationship with food and the way we form our taste preferences. First Bite: How We Learn to Eat takes us through the many and varied influences on our perception of flavour, beginning from before we are even born.

She explains how even inside the womb we are introduced to the flavour of the food our mother eats via the amniotic fluid that surrounds us, so that by the time we are born we have already learned a preference for certain foods based on familiarity. So, it seems that nutrition during pregnancy – and while breast-feeding, as the same applies to breast milk – is not just about giving the baby the right building blocks for development, but also about helping to shape the child’s eating habits later on.

When the baby begins to eat solid food, introducing a wider variety of flavours early on makes them more familiar with, and therefore more accepting of, these flavours as a toddler, which is often when children can become more picky.

EMOTIONS AND EXPERIENCES

As babies begin to eat solid food, the capacity for emotional and environmental factors to influence their response to taste increases. Taste is influenced by past experiences and expectations, as well as the actual taste at the time of eating, so food can become linked in our minds to certain feelings or situations – happy, sad, uncomfortable – that occurred while we ate. Ms Wilson describes her urge to buy chocolate on train journeys, which she traces back to her father, newly divorced, treating her to chocolate on her trips back to her mother after visiting him.

It is not hard to see how eating, which should be such a simple act, could become complicated when a child begins attending nursery. After the familiar and comforting food of home, they are launched into a totally new environment and introduced to new tastes and textures by relative strangers.

Of course, nursery professionals are used to comforting and settling new children, and a few calm words of encouragement and the example of the other children is usually enough to give a child the confidence to eat. Often parents are surprised at the range of foods their child will eventually try at nursery. Sometimes a child will have more deep-seated issues about food and it is important not to make them feel under pressure to try new tastes and textures.

ROLE MODELS

At Snapdragons we encourage sociable mealtimes where children and adults sit together and serve themselves, helping picky eaters to feel more relaxed. The sharing, turn-taking and talking involved deflect attention from the picky eater, allowing them the space to make decisions about the food they put on their plate – not just what, but how much and where on the plate, because lots of children like each element to be separate and not covered in sauce.

Mealtimes are a great chance to chat about why certain foods are important and what they do for us, because children respond to rational explanations. Our staff always eat a portion of the food with the children, using positive language, and this definitely encourages them to eat well.

TRY AGAIN

We don’t give up too soon when a child refuses a new food. It can take many attempts before they become familiar with a new taste, but with gentle encouragement and tiny portions we often have success.

Variety is key too. The more vegetables you expose a child to, the more likely they are to at least eat some of them. Of course, sometimes that does not happen, and it is important not to impose our own perceptions of taste on someone who genuinely finds something unpleasant.

Apparently there is a gene that causes some people to find sprouts and other brassicas more bitter than those without it.

No amount of encouragement will make sprouts taste good to someone with this gene.

ILLNESS

We keep aware of how a child is feeling and don’t introduce new foods if they are unwell. This is because taste can be perceived differently when we are ill, but also because the child may then associate a particular food with feeling ill and learn to distrust or dislike it more.

BE MORE FINNISH

Using food for role play, creative arts and, of course, cooking helps children who are unsure feel more comfortable with the smell and feel of new foods.

Ms Wilson writes in her book about the Sapere movement, originally from France, which was adopted in Finland and other Nordic countries in an effort to reverse the escalating child obesity levels there. Sapere introduces children to food using all of their senses, allowing them to become familiar with it in every aspect and with open minds.

RELAX

Most of all we do not make the child feel stressed and unhappy about food and mealtimes. We talk to their parents about how we approach the issues and encourage them to support us at home, keeping a consistent and calm approach, which we know will reap benefits.

Mary Llewellin is operations manager for Snapdragons. Snapdragons Keynsham has the Food For Life Partnership Gold Catering Mark, a Children’s Food Trust Award, is accredited by the Vegetarian Society and was winner of the Nursery WorldNursery Food Award in 2012 and 2014. See www.snapdragonsnursery.com

MORE INFORMATION

Bea Wilson (2015) First Bite: How We Learn to Eat. Fourth Estate

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