“What makes junk food so dangerous is not that it is unhealthy - though it is. It’s that it is entwined in our minds with so many other memories that are good and true and pure. memory has always been an important part of how we learn to eat, but never before have so many of us been stamped with reinforcing food memories that mostly come not from a cuisine but from a series of cartons and packets. When we hear someone suggesting that we stop eating our favourite brand of ice cream or potato crisps or sliced white bread, we feel a knee-jerk hostility. It’s hard to let go of these foods and find a better way of eating without a sense of loss. The thing you are losing is your own childhood.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“The flavour of sweet milk is perhaps the most firmly imprinted of all food memories in Western culture.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“Modern meals marketed at children send the message that if you are a kid, you cannot be expected to find enjoyment in anything so boring as real, whole food.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“With good cooking and a patient but persistent approach at mealtimes, it could be food that was both good for the children and enjoyable.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“In most places, for most of history, children’s food has not existed as a separate category after the age of weaning.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“The main reason to be suspicious of fruit as a food for children was that it was just so delicious.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“We know that letting our children eat too many sweets makes us a bad parent, hence the pointless ritual at Halloween when parents allow their children to go from house to house accumulating a big haul of treats, only to confiscate them at the end of the night, because they don’t want their child to get cavities. Yes despite their anxiety about sweets, parents will happily feed their children highly sweetened sports bars, fruit snacks and cereals which are sweets in all but name.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“While the form of ‘kid food’ is more varied than ever, however, the content is far less so. Foods marketed specifically at children tend to be higher than average in salt, sugar and fat.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“How can wholesome nursery food compete with hundreds of new and heavily advertised concoctions, calculated to appeal to a child’s sense of novelty?”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
“The sense that children need their own special foods that are uniquely appealing and altogether different from a mainstream human diet - like pet food - starts early, with commercial baby food.”
Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat