Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes by Shylashri Shankar

Author:Shylashri Shankar [Shankar, Shylashri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

(Source: Bee Wilson)

Given these findings, the question faced by most parents is how to reduce neophobia in early childhood and create a preference for nutritious food. Make eating a social event for infants and children, say some behavioural psychologists. Do not give a child a reward for simply eating (‘eat your vegetables and you can have an ice cream’). Offer food as reward for approved behaviour because then the child will associate these foods with higher value and will develop a preference for those foods or lentils. But what to do with those spurned veggies or fruits? How do you make the child eat them?

Turns out, there is a way—The Tiny Tastes System developed by Cooke. The parent and the child choose a vegetable or something healthy that the child moderately dislikes. For ten-to-fourteen days, you offer the child a pea-sized amount. If the child eats it or even licks it, a tick mark and a sticker are the rewards. If not, never fear, tomorrow is another day. By the end of two weeks, the child may not dislike the vegetable so much. Cooke’s logic is that the child likes to be rewarded for doing something he or she dislikes, and has worked for. While the under-twenty-seven-month toddler is indifferent to social influence, for those between the ages of twenty-seven months and five years, peer pressure does work. So if you have a picky eater, get him or her to eat with other (preferably older) non-neophobes.

While there may be genetic aspects to the way our preferences are formed, these are not as important as the environmental influences such as what we are given to eat, at what age, and how much we are exposed to new foods, and what the system of penalties and rewards are for a particular kind of behaviour. Some traditions are worth following. An interesting tradition among Hindus is annaprasanam, the offering of solid food—sweetened rice, dal and ghee—to six-month-old babies. Variations on this are followed by other regions. A feast with a variety of rice, fish and other items is laid out on a banana leaf in front of the baby. Among Malayalis, the father is expected to dip a gold ring in each dish and touch the ring to the baby’s tongue. The mother and other elders follow with the same ritual. The baby then is exposed to a range of tastes at that age. It would be interesting to compare babies that have undergone this tradition with those who have not, and see if the former are less likely to become neophobes or picky eaters. Preferences are primarily learned, so expose your infants to feasts at a very young age.

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