From Comfort Foods to Cone Chaos: Exploring Food, Memories, and How We Eat

You must have noticed that there are certain foods that can pull you back to a particular moment in time, isn’t that interesting? One bite of a simple food and you’re suddenly seven years old, perhaps sitting at your grandmother’s table or reliving memories of school lunches. This intense feeling is what people who study food call ‘food-induced nostalgia.’ It’s a whole range of sensory experiences – the tastes, smells, textures, and even sounds associated with food that empathise with you and take you back to another place or another time in your life.

This bittersweet longing for the past isn’t just a fun trip down memory lane, it actually touches areas of the brain associated with reward processing, which may explain why those nostalgic moments of food often make us feel good. It’s a universally experienced feeling that occurs across cultures and eras. We can even consciously use it to lift our spirits or boost our sense of self and well-being. Think of it as a mental health hack that utilises your taste buds!

Since food plays such an important role in our memories and emotional well-being throughout our lives, it seems important to get a handle on how to approach eating from the start, doesn’t it? Building a positive relationship with food starts very early, even before a child learns to walk or talk. As it turns out, there are some very smart ways we can help the youngest eaters in our lives become adventurous food lovers, laying the foundation for a lifetime of delicious experiences and positive food memories. Let’s dive into some key strategies for shaping healthy habits from the start.

1. **Adjust Your Expectations**: You wouldn’t expect a baby’s first step to be sprinting across the room at full speed, would you? The same is true when we learn to love new foods – it’s not something kids are born to do. It’s a skill that needs to be learned and practised, just like learning to read or ride a bike.

One feeding expert refers to this process as ‘taste training’ and emphasises that patience is absolutely key. It takes time for little ones to get used to new tastes and textures. Studies have even shown that babies may need to taste a new fruit or vegetable eight to 15 times before they actually start eating more. That’s a lot more than many parents allow their child to try something three to five times before they think they ‘don’t like’ it.

It’s easy to label your child as a ‘non-eater’ or ‘picky eater,’ but always remembering that they really are still in the learning stage can change your perspective. This understanding helps manage those expectations and reduces stress at mealtimes.

2. **Offer a Variety of Foods**: Planning ahead is an important part of helping your baby become a flexible eater. Experts suggest that the first two years of your child’s life is the best window to introduce them to a variety of different flavours. The aim is simple – the more flavours they are exposed to early on, the better.

Why is it important to focus so much on food variety in the first few years? Because most children enter a new phase around the age of two where they become less open to trying new things. Sometimes, they may even start to reject foods they used to like! This is a common stage of growth. By exposing them to a wider range of flavours before this fussy stage arrives, you can essentially build a broader base of food acceptance for them.

If they have tried and accepted a wide range of flavours before the age of two, they will naturally continue to eat a wider variety of foods even as their resistance to novelty increases. It’s a proactive strategy that will help them get past the typical picky eating stage while already establishing a more varied diet.

3. **Offer a Variety of Textures**: For little ones to feel comfortable with food, so the texture of the food is as important as the flavour. While smooth, pureed foods are a classic starting point, don’t shy away from introducing foods with different textures at a relatively early age. Consider offering your baby soft, cookable foods that they can easily pick up and explore, such as boiled sweet potato stems, chunks of ripe avocado, or freshly steamed zucchini sticks.

One study found that babies given applesauce of different textures – smooth, a little chunky, or even chopped – grew up to like a wider range of textures than most babies who only ate smooth puree. This suggests that early exposure to different textures helps their tastebuds and mouths develop for different consistencies.

Another study of older children showed an important link between early exposure to different textures and later eating habits. Seven-year-olds who were exposed to lumpy solid foods after nine months of age ate a smaller variety of foods and had more severe feeding difficulties than those who were exposed to lumpy solid foods at six to nine months of age. This really highlights how important early texture experiences are in shaping long-term eating patterns.

4. **Prioritize a Calm Table**: Ideally, mealtimes should be a relaxing, interactive experience for the whole family, but sometimes it can turn into a battleground, especially if you are dealing with a child who is a picky eater. One of the paediatric dietitians mentioned in the article points out that a child’s fussiness may actually be a reaction to the tense atmosphere at mealtimes. So anxiety and stress are definitely not conducive to a healthy appetite in your little one.

If you take a step back and interfere less with your baby’s natural exploration of food and focus on enjoying your own treats, you’re doing a few key things. You are modelling healthy eating habits and enjoyment of food for your baby. More importantly, you are creating a safe, accepting and happy eating environment for your child. This positive atmosphere allows children to feel comfortable trying new things and develop a positive relationship with food.

5. **Change What You Serve When**: Who says eggs are only for breakfast and soup is only for dinner? Younger children don’t yet have the same stereotypical ideas about which foods belong at certain meals or snack times that we adults do. This is the perfect opportunity to get creative and break away from traditional meal norms.

Feeding experts recommend making the most of this flexibility. For example, offer hummus and steamed carrots in the morning, or make soup a snack. When parents and kids get stuck in a predictable pattern of what meals and snacks should look like, they sometimes habitually make less healthy choices, such as sugary cereal for breakfast or a heavy reliance on crackers and pretzels for snacks.

Mixing up the times and types of food offered throughout the day not only exposes children to a wider variety of foods, but also shows them that healthy foods can be enjoyed at any time. This encourages children to be more flexible with their food choices and prevents them from falling into a rut of only eating certain foods at certain times of the day.

6. **Let Your Baby Make a Mess**: This may be hard for tidy babies, but letting your baby make a mess of their food is actually a very important part of their learning process. Resist the urge to constantly wipe your baby’s face or stop them from playing with their food. This is because babies need to explore food through all their senses, especially their hands and mouths, to learn more about it.

The act of squeezing, smearing and hands-on handling of food teaches babies valuable lessons about food texture, consistency and different food sensations. This tactile exploration creates a sense of familiarity and comfort with a variety of foods.

7. **Serve a Fruit or Vegetable at Every Meal and Snack**: This may sound super simple, but consistency is key to encouraging kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. Whether it’s a regular meal or a snack, making it a goal to include a fruit or veggie every time you offer food can greatly increase your child’s exposure.

They may not eat all the food you offer every time, and that’s perfectly fine! The key is to make sure they have the opportunity to see and interact with fruits and veggies on a regular basis and hopefully taste them. We know that the more familiar a child is with a food, the more likely they are to eventually embrace it. This approach removes the pressure of your child needing to eat a lot at once and instead focuses on consistent exposure over time.

This strategy also teaches your child that fruits and vegetables are part of a normal, daily diet and can be enjoyed throughout the day. Even if they only have a few bites now and then, these small amounts will add up throughout the day, increasing their total intake and familiarity with food.

8. **Downplay Dessert**: Ah, dessert – often a source of negotiation, conflict and stress for parents and children. Getting a head start on this potential battleground in the first few years can save a lot of trouble. Think about how to make dessert less of a “big deal.”

One easy way is to eat something simple and healthy at the end of most meals, like a piece of fruit. Or, you can choose to skip sweets altogether most of the time. It’s perfectly normal to have the occasional traditional dessert such as cookies or cake, and no one is suggesting a lifelong fast! – But it’s how you provide those desserts that’s key.

One surprisingly effective strategy shared by a feeding expert is to offer sweets alongside the main meal, rather than holding sweets hostage until all other foods are eaten. This helps to minimize the importance and value of the dessert. Yes, your child may eat dessert first or even nibble on it throughout the meal, but if you keep portions small, they will likely still eat other foods. The key is to avoid creating a power struggle or tying dessert to mood or performance (e.g., using dessert as a reward or punishment for finishing vegetables).

9. **Don’t Fall Into a Rut**: If you want to prevent your child from eating only one particular brand of chicken nuggets or preferring only a particular shape of pasta, mix up the food from the start! Varying the types, brands, shapes, sizes and flavors of food gives them a broader sensory experience and builds flexibility.

By consistently providing this variety, your child will become accustomed to trying slightly different and familiar foods. They may still favor a particular type of food, but they’ll be more willing to try other similar choices, thus avoiding the frustrating situation of only eating food prepared in one particular way.

Related posts:
Tastes from our past can spark memories, trigger pain or boost wellbeing. Here’s how to embrace food nostalgia
Help End Childhood Hunger at North Texas Food Bank’s “Taste! At the Star” Fundraiser on June 13
15 Ways To Help Your Baby Love Food as Much as You Do