I find it interesting that some of the healthiest foods are widely considered to be gross.
E.g. organ meats, bone marrow, collagen sources like, cartillage, pig’s feet, fish skin or aspic, sulfur rich vegetables brassicas or alliums, mushrooms, ‘imperfect’ but organic foods (e.g. heirloom apple with a worm vs. perfect supermarket granny smith) etc. just to name a few.
I wonder if that’s cultural or if there is a natural aversion that first has to be overcome by eating it. I could see it giving a cave man a survival advantage, if you first have to be taught what foods are safe to eat, but then the body learns they are healthy and loves them. Because if you were naturally attracted to liver, you might just eat a polar bear liver and die of vitamin A overdose. Same with mushrooms. Basically it’s gatekeeping what foods you eat until your parents/tribe can teach you what is safe to eat.
Perhaps the foods that are universially loved by kids are generally hard to mix up with something dangerous, like muscle meats.
My late grandma loved all of the foods I listed, but I hated them as a kid. I wonder if it was the same for her as a kid?
I think partially its because evolutionarily speaking, high calorie foods like sugar and fats were rarer and useful. So the brain is like, ‘yes i need this to live, find more’
But now we live in a society that has all these resources and can exploit this, and we have to actively stop ourselves from over-indulging.
Ive heard - take it with a pinch of salt cos it might be bollocks - that thats why even as recently as a few centuries ago the western beauty standard was… plumper/chubbier. It signified wealth and prosperity, and i guess the ability to survive a lean winter
I understand that children have many more taste buds (not sure in total or by area) than adults have. This leads to a stronger reaction towards bitter taste as it could be more toxic. A lot of the healthy adult food is indeed quite bitter (broccoli, salad, even liver etc). It might be literally an acquired taste
(months later) animal based food tastes good or bad depending on how much you need the nutrients
So you can eat steak every day as it has about a day’s nutrition in it, but the organ meats are much higher in many nutrients, possibly too much for a well nourished kid so I can imagine it tasting bad as a signal that it’s unnecessarily rich
I find it interesting that some of the healthiest foods are widely considered to be gross.
E.g. organ meats, bone marrow, collagen sources like, cartillage, pig’s feet, fish skin or aspic, sulfur rich vegetables brassicas or alliums, mushrooms, ‘imperfect’ but organic foods (e.g. heirloom apple with a worm vs. perfect supermarket granny smith) etc. just to name a few.
I wonder if that’s cultural or if there is a natural aversion that first has to be overcome by eating it. I could see it giving a cave man a survival advantage, if you first have to be taught what foods are safe to eat, but then the body learns they are healthy and loves them. Because if you were naturally attracted to liver, you might just eat a polar bear liver and die of vitamin A overdose. Same with mushrooms. Basically it’s gatekeeping what foods you eat until your parents/tribe can teach you what is safe to eat.
Perhaps the foods that are universially loved by kids are generally hard to mix up with something dangerous, like muscle meats.
My late grandma loved all of the foods I listed, but I hated them as a kid. I wonder if it was the same for her as a kid?
I think partially its because evolutionarily speaking, high calorie foods like sugar and fats were rarer and useful. So the brain is like, ‘yes i need this to live, find more’
But now we live in a society that has all these resources and can exploit this, and we have to actively stop ourselves from over-indulging.
Ive heard - take it with a pinch of salt cos it might be bollocks - that thats why even as recently as a few centuries ago the western beauty standard was… plumper/chubbier. It signified wealth and prosperity, and i guess the ability to survive a lean winter
But then it’ll just taste weird.
I understand that children have many more taste buds (not sure in total or by area) than adults have. This leads to a stronger reaction towards bitter taste as it could be more toxic. A lot of the healthy adult food is indeed quite bitter (broccoli, salad, even liver etc). It might be literally an acquired taste
(months later) animal based food tastes good or bad depending on how much you need the nutrients
So you can eat steak every day as it has about a day’s nutrition in it, but the organ meats are much higher in many nutrients, possibly too much for a well nourished kid so I can imagine it tasting bad as a signal that it’s unnecessarily rich