I have been reading a fantastic book this month called First Bite, How We Learn to Eat, by Bee Wilson.
The book is really well written, compiling a multitude of research and analysis, but in a very accessible and interesting way. Bee writes in a lively way, managing to combine anecdote with research whilst keeping you engaged. She makes the ideas and content interesting through her own insight and also by showing how relevant all of this is to you and me.
Kid and adult eating is the same
A large part of the book focuses on children and their eating, but as Bee herself points out, the original intention was to write a book about children’s eating, but when she realised that so many of the issues and challenges are the same for adults, she kept the remit of the book wider to include adults too.
‘Kid food’ – fact or fiction?
As one part of the book mentions, the whole notion of ‘Kid Food’, a fairly recent phenomenon that marketeers seem to have conjured up, is that food for children must be fun. Children just won’t eat normal, ‘adult’ food, so we have to entice them to eat fun, ‘kid food’. Really?
Secondly, the same marketeers seem to assume that kids have a natural liking of sugar and fat. After all, just look at any kids menu in a restaurant and it will always have pizza, chips, chicken nuggets; basically fat, sugar and simple carbohydrates. I had never really been aware of this, until I started looking more closely at them, after reading this book.
The trouble is, says Bee, is that this ‘natural’ appetite for for sugar, fats and little else, is completely false; kids have learnt to eat that way.
So, she questions the whole notion of the need for ‘kid food’, and its health merits. I am starting to agree. I am all in favour of food in shapes, but why not vegetables in shapes? What’s more, as I start to become more critical of kid’s menus in restaurants, so does my daughter. I hadn’t realised how much her expectations were based on mine, until I started to change mine.
It also seems clearer to me that ‘kid food’ is another fantastic money spinner for the food industry – think of alphabet spaghetti and dinosaur chicken nuggets; to name just two.
Changing how we eat
This leads to the big take away of the book for me, which is that we learn to eat, we learn to like certain foods, and we can re-train our taste buds and appetite to like and want to eat less sugar, fat and salt. A great revelation, if this can help the almost 2 billion people around the world who are overweight*.
The last chapter on change was particularly relevant for me, because it is all about changing our eating habits, which is exactly where I am at!
Bee says, the common idea that by starting with telling people about the health benefits of certain foods is completely upside down. That was a eureka moment for me. Instead, Bee suggests instead of starting with information, we start with pleasure!
We start first with getting people to be aware of different foods (the colours, smell, taste), get them to try new foods and see how they react. Depending on the reaction to taste (which is also influenced by the quality of cooking, ingredients, the environment where it is eaten…), people choose to eat more or less of it. Then finally, people can learn about the health benefits.
The choice to eat comes from pleasure, we eat what we like, and then the information about health comes last. People rarely change their eating habits because they have been told a certain food is healthy.
In order to change our eating habits, we don’t just need to learn what to eat, we need to change how we feel about food. It seems it’s more a question of psychology than nutrition.
Summary
The book has some great chapters, including one on hunger, and how most of us in the developed world have lost touch with this compass for eating; instead we are guided by the clock and mealtimes. There is also a fascinating overview of eating disorders, and how they are more common and disruptive than we may think.
So overall, a great read, finished off with some nice insights at the end about healthy eating (not advice, Bee hastens to add; as she doesn’t know us personally, she can’t advise us)!
* World Health Organisation – http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/
An enjoyable read, very accessible and relevant if you have children, but worth a read even if you don’t.
Click on the image below to check it out, then let me know what you think.