2-3 years old children eat almost anything. My son is with pleasure was eating broccoli puree, without salt and other additives. Now the word "cabbage" begins hysterics. As a child I hated liver, but my friend did not eat tomatoes. Why is this happening, can answer food psychology.
All people have a list of products that they did not complain as a child and enjoyed by today. But I still feel sick from the smell of the liver, and some of the friends do not understand how you can eat prunes. Most often the problem is not in the stomach and head.
How to make friends with the unloved products? Psychologist Elizabeth Phillips has been studying the psychology of eating. It tells how to cope with rejection of the food that we do not carry over from childhood.
Why do we love or hate food
People form their menu under the influence of innate and learned preferences. In the first case, the brain of each person decides by the same laws. A second secret lies in childhood.
innate preferences
It turns out that our innate taste preferences play a little significant role in the selection
meals. From birth, we are programmed to sugar cravings and to refuse to sour and bitter.Taste preferences can be explained in terms of evolution. Sweet food - a good source of nutrients, so we tend to choose it. For example, ripe fruit often safe and rich in vitamins. While poisonous plants almost always bitter, so we are at the genetic level to refuse such taste. This partly explains why some people do not like vegetables.
Babies from the first days show the relationship to sweet and bitter, and salty reaction develops in them a little later.
Phillips believes that our craving for sodium chloride is also easily explained by adaptation. In the water, the salt lake contains many trace elements needed by the body.
We love and fatty foods: it provides a significant amount of calories. That's why people love the combination of fat and sweet (ice cream) or fatty and salty (fried potatoes).
learned preferences
Congenital factors adjusted eating behavior, but mainly influenced by learned preference. They are formed before our birth.
We get the first lessons about the taste of being in the womb. A child absorbs knowledge from the mother through the umbilical cord and amniotic fluid. scientists have provedHuman foetuses learn odours from their pregnant mother's dietThat children express less negative reaction to the smell of anise and garlic, if women are pregnant they ate these foods. The same applies to carrots. Babies like its taste, if their mothers drank carrot juice during pregnancy and lactation.
You already know that food preferences are formed within two years. First, you eat all that give adults and then become neophobia. Now you do not like a new food. So if your mother did not like garlic, onions or liver, the chances to enjoy them vanish.
This is where many parents make the biggest mistake. They believe that the child is simply not like that kind of food. But children do not like a new food. If you stop trying to feed the offspring of these products, some will hate it as adults. Parents just do not know that, if we continue to treat the child boiled vegetables, they like it over time.
The solution is to make this meal customary. Try again and again. It can take anywhere from 10 to 15 attempts. So, if you do not like a dish, often include it in the menu.
We do not just eat food because we love them. On the contrary. We love them because they are constantly eat.
But the move to a new diet is not as easy as it seems. This should be done within 2-4 months. If you are used to drinking milk fat, 10 glasses of skim obviously will not be enough for the emergence of warm feelings. Your body needs time to restructure the taste buds.
How to accustom themselves to the unloved products
It would seem that the majority of our time preferences learned, then your diet is sufficient to adjust and just get yourself addicted to the new food. But the psychology of taste a lot of amusing nuances that are worth knowing.
For example, there are people who are hypersensitive to bitterness, that is why they try to avoid green vegetables.
Also do not forget that the senses play an important role in the taste preferences. the smell of food really affects us, but we appreciate the dish and appearance. If you change it, taste It will be perceived differently.
Remember how many times you can not even look at what recently poisoned. All in the mind: an original program developed in order to protect us from the poisonous food.
Remember: if you want to change its attitude towards certain products, you need to prepare psychologically and accustom oneself to new stages.
if you have children, Try as much as possible to diversify their menus. They need to try something new. And even if there is something they do not like, perhaps, to the twentieth time they say that now is their favorite dish.
Develop the taste buds and get used to the different food is not only beneficial to the body. This will come in handy when traveling. For example, Asian cuisine peculiar to Europeans unusual tastes, colors, smells. It is interesting to try something new than to frantically search for the nearest "McDonald's".
see also
- 3 psychological reasons of completeness →
- How we change what we eat →
- Is it possible to not have to pay for a meal in a restaurant, if you do not like →