Bee Wilson Quotes

“If it’s not a mealtime and you are wondering which of two ‘healthy snacks’ you should buy, the answer is probably neither.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Snacks

“If you want your children to eat better, don’t tell them what to do; eat better yourself.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Eating

“Most of our approaches to feeding children are too short term. We worry about the next five minutes when we should worry about the next five years.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Eating Feeding

“It is genuinely possible to reach the point where you desire broccoli more than fries and wholemeal sourdough more than sliced white bread.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Health Eating Food Writing

“Changing the way you eat is hard, but it can be done. Look at Japan.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Change Food Eating Japan

“Hunger is always a kind of emptiness - an absence of nourishment - but what it will take to replenish it is far from obvious.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Hunger Food Writing

“The rise of vast portions - particularly in fast-food restaurants - means that if we eat only the calories we need, we should often stop at half of something; or even a quarter. And no one - child or adult - seems to like the feeling of the glass- - or plate - half empty.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Portions Food Writing

“Being able to regulate the amount of food we eat according to our needs is perhaps the single most important skill when it comes to eating, and the one that we leat often master.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Very little of the eating that happens in the modern world is as simple as: feel hungry, eat food. The great challenge for most people is learning how to recognise when we have had enough.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“If food is a fuel, we should feel that the tank is emptiest when the longest time has elapsed since it was filled - usually in the morning.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Morning Food Breakfast Food Writing

“Hunger - this mechanism that we suppose to be so basic - turns out to be one of the more intricate bodily impulses.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Hunger Food Writing

“If you can cancel a child’s hunger during those first three years - from conception to toddlerdom -you create possibilities that stretch decades into the future. If not, the consequences can last for generations.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Hunger Food Writing

“One of the reasons hunger is so hard to pin down is that it is a negative concept, an absence.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Hunger Food Writing

“Hara hachi bu is a Confucian principle, popular in Japan since medieval times, that you should eat until you are only eight-tenths full. This principle has since been given backing by nutrition scientists who note that when we eat there is a time delay between the body receiving the food and the brain registering that we are full. When the urge comes to have a second helping, it’s worth waiting twenty minutes, and the feeling may pass.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Culture Food Japan Food Writing Confucianism

“One of the commonest ways our eating goes wrong is that we consistently choose foods that offer immediate satiation in the belly rather than longer lasting satiety.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Food Writing Satiety

“Soup leaves us full because we believe it will.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Soup Food Writing

Food Soup Food Writing Soul Food

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“All soup is soul food.”

“In pretty much every country in the world, something hot and brothy cooked in a pot and served in a bowl is viewed as uniquely nourishing. Soup places low demands on the eater. It treats you as a child, who may or may not know how to use a knife and fork. You do not have to chop, or even to chew. Soup is what our mothers gave us when we were ailing. It’s what we return to after a hard day at work, when all we want to do is curl up in a foetal position on the sofa.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Mother Food Soup Food Writing

“Very little about the way we eat is, in fact, logical.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“It’s easy to confuse hunger with other emotional states.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Emotions Hunger

“We eat so often and so much because we have more or less lost touch with the signals our body is sending us about hunger.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Hunger Food Writing

“Up until the age of three, children have a remarkable ability to stop eating when they are full.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Eating Food Writing

“The loss of hunger regulation after the age of four is a phenomenon that transcends cultures and continents.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Hunger Food Writing

“From childhood onwards, our idea of fullness is heavily influenced by how much food we are offered.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Hunger Food Writing

“We need new eating methods to take account of the new ways we are being supplied with food.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“It’s a chancy business, taking our cues about how much to consume from our surroundings.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Avoid ‘distracting’ meals such as TV dinners and computer lunches. replace the biscuit jar with a fruit bowl. Repackage food into smaller containers. Order half-size portions in restaurants. Replace short wide glasses with tall narrow ones. And get smaller plates.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Diet Food Writing

“Many parents, especially those who themselves struggle with their weight, believe that a child is incapable of self-control when it comes to eating.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Eating Parents

“Part of eating well is making friends with hunger.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Hunger Food Writing

“Cereal is a medium through which we learn to confuse hunger with marketing.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Breakfast Food Writing Cereal

“Of all the foods that we could give a child a free rein over, cereal makes the least sense. Parents let children choose cereal but dictate which vegetables they eat; it should be the other way around.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Eating Food Writing

“The cereals marketed for children are consistently the most sugary and highly processed in the whole cereal aisle.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Breakfast Cereal

“The first step in recovering from an eating disorder is recognising that there is a problem.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Eating Disorder Food Writing

“Structured meals, at which a wide range of foods is offered in a firm but loving way, are a key part of the cure for any eating disorder.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Eating Disorder Food Writing

“For people with eating disorders, food is both a poison and the remedy, but this is true for the rest of us as well. Food is an inescapable fact of life and the task for each of us is to find a way to make out peace with it.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Eating Disorder Food Writing

“The art of feeding, it turns out, is not about pushing ‘one more bite’ into someone’s mouth, however healthy the food. Nor is it about authoritarian demands to abstain from all treats. It is about creating a mealtime environment where those eating are free to develop their own tastes, because all the choices on the table are real, whole food.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Feeding Food Writing

“The Japanese bento - pioneered using aluminium boxes in the early twentieth century - offers a structure ideally designed for eating a healthy lunch.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Lunch Japanese Bento Lunchbox

“Siblings have always marked out territory through food.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Family Food Siblings Food Writing

“The power siblings have over our eating habits is no small thing. yet we hardly ever talk about these familial influences.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Family Food Eating Siblings

“A treat cannot possibly have the same meaning in an era where white-flour cakes are everywhere and candy canes are sold by the dozen for less than the price of a loaf of bread.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Cake Treat

“We are all descended from survivors, and survivors were the chubby ones.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Evolution Food Writing Chubby

“We urgently need to invent new models of generosity. We need to find a way for a small portion to feel as much like love as a large one.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Feeding children too often can make them forget what their own hunger feels like. Large portions lead to overeating. And giving food to calm a distressed child teaches them that unhappiness is a reason to eat.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Force-feeding is a crime of passion, driven by a parent’s desire to see a child eat; as with other crimes of passion, the perpetrator has lost sight of the loved one’s autonomy.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Indulgence makes a child fat. Restriction makes a child fat and unhappy.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“The true objective is independence: for a child to reach the point where they can regulate their own intake of food and to choose the things that will do them good while giving them pleasure. Weaning them off milk is one thing. But the real task for a parent is to wean children off needing you.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Feeding Food Writing

“Next time you sit down to eat, imagine you are an ideal parent feeding a beloved child. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could offer yourself food in a warm, structured, no-fuss kind of way? You wouldn’t punish yourself with crash diets nor would you allow yourself too much junk. Your priority when choosing food would be to see yourself well nourished and you’d choose meals to keep your mood on an even keel. You’d want yourself to enjoy eating. The pantry would be stocked with good food and you would trust yourself to choose wisely from its contents.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“The problem with lunchboxes is the problem with the way we feed children in general. Parents trust that anything they place in this magical box will be good for the child, because it comes with their love.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Lunch Lunchbox

“Each bite that you see the other person take reinforces your liking. Or not: it is hard to sit calmly by and carry on eating if you share a table with someone who is grumbling that peas are ‘gross’ and pinging them at you with a knife.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat