Originally I'd titled this post, Operation Palate Plasticity, but then as I wrote it, I realized it's only the supporting part of this story.
So where to begin. Well, we've got 3 little girls, and I've certainly learned both from experience and from reading medical literature, that if there's a food they reject, the best way for us to get them to eat it is to try, try, try, try, try (and add a whole pile more tries), again.
Our home's rule is simple. You have to eat one bite of everything that's put on your plate. If you don't like it after a bite, you don't need to have more, and there's always at least a few different choices per meal (but second meals aren't prepared to replace wholly rejected first ones).
My oldest probably took 30 runs at green leafy salads until she started eating them without pause. My middle kid, 30 runs at sweet potatoes. And the baby? So far she still eats pretty much anything.
Apparently kids' palates are rather plastic, and just like I tell the girls, if you try a food enough times, eventually your tongue will learn to like it.
Well one day a little over a month ago I got to thinking. I wonder if my palate's got any plasticity left?
To test it I chose coffee.
Once upon a time I had been a classic Canadian double-double drinker. By med school I'd swapped cream out for whole milk. Opening up my practice here I swapped down to skim milk and Splenda, but I never could go black.
I tried here and there, but I found black coffee to be more than repulsive. I found it bitter, angry and at odds with my mouth.
Given I drink coffee daily, usually 2 cups, I figured what better item than hideously black coffee to to test whether or not I could retrain my taste buds.
July 29th I started the experiment. The coffee was vile. Hate my mouth vile. I suffered through 2 vile coffees daily for a few weeks, and then, somehow, they went from being absolutely vile, to just being bad. A week later, and suddenly they were tolerable, and as I sit and type now, I'm enjoying my black coffee greatly.
60 cups of coffee is what it took to retrain my palate.
I'd estimate that 60 cups is somewhere on the order of 1,800 sips (comparable in a sense to our one bite rule). So in my n=1 personal experiment, my adult palate appears to be 60 times less plastic than my kids'.
So where am I going with all of this?
I'm going to our children, and not just mine, but yours too.
If children grow up in homes where their palates are trained to enjoy highly processed, highly salted, nutritionally bereft boxed foods, take out meals and restaurants, what chance do you think they'll have at retraining their palates as adults to enjoy more healthful fare? What chance do you think their kids will have?
Eighteen hundred reintroductions is what it took to retrain my adult palate.
Do you think there are many adults who'll bother doing that with anything?
Wouldn't it be easier to train your kids' palates right from the get go setting them up for lifelong dietary success, rather than take the processed and restaurant way out and set them up for a potentially lifelong dietary struggle?
I sure think so.
(A bit more on this tomorrow.)
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A double-double isn't a coffee, it's a warm milkshake.
ReplyDeleteThere is large body of research that says that taste is, to a large extent, socially mediated. Wine professionals all know that they're not supposed to enjoy wines with high residual sugar, so they keep drinking dry wines until the day comes when a wine that's full of sugar physically disgusts them - unless it's a Sauterne, which is a socially acceptable sweet drink.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't just people pretending to like something for the sake of appearances. They have come to genuinely enjoy the wines they are supposed to like, and there is fMRI evidence to back this up.
It makes sense that the palate must be plastic, otherwise you wouldn't have food trends and you wouldn't be able to eat the foods of other cultures when first exposed to them as an adult.
And, just on palate plasticity again... you can't really compare the time it takes to learn to like black coffee with the time it takes your kids to like something like sweet potato. Black coffee is a very bitter item and the palate naturally goes for things on the sweeter spectrum.
ReplyDeleteWhat you might find is that, having learned to enjoy one bitter thing, you rapidly come to embrace other bitter foods. You've potentially opened up a whole different taste avenue.
Coffee is a appetite stimulus and a adrenaline stimulus that screws with blood glucose for some people. For those of us with damaged metabolism, it is as bad as wheat (see Wheat Belly) and sugar.
ReplyDeleteLOL Anonymous, a bull's eye! I had similar experience but with different outcomes. Initially taking my coffee with milk and sugar, a lifetime ago I gave up sugar only, cold turkey. It was a snap and took only 3 wks to train my palate. Next was milk, which was easy too, because I have lactose intolerance and most places do not have lactose-free milk. My favourite coffee in restaurants became an espresso double allongé, no milk, no sugar. But at home it's laziness that dominates and I continue to brew filter coffee, taking it sugarless but with a dash of 2% Lactaid. It would take next to no effort to cut the milk and by the same token the sugar it supplies, but I still haven't done it. I have no use for the milk, other than in my home-brewed coffee. Just goes to show, such is human nature. In any case, I find that black coffee does zip to my glucose, but the milk - yes indeed.
ReplyDelete1,800 sips! You're a trooper, Yoni!
ReplyDeleteI've lived long-term in three other countries, one with very different food available. I lost 25 pounds in the first year and hardly noticed the effort. But there are still some food from that part of the world that I can't bring myself to eat. Luckily, lots of other choices were available!
Love this post! I also went cold turkey with the sugar in my coffee, like Roman. It's only been a few weeks, but now coffee with sugar tastes like an overly-sweet dessert. At the beginning though, I gagged through the entire cup.
ReplyDeleteMy girls are five and two. And I find the baby eats anything you put in front of her. The five year old was like that, but she has gotten fussier as she's gotten older. Has anyone else found that? I think it's a way to proclaim her independence.
But we have the try-it rule too - last night was black bean soup. She said she wouldn't like it, then she said she both disliked it and liked it; in the end, she licked the bowl clean.
But she genuinely hates salad greens; she will eat all the non-lettuce items in a salad happily.
Awesome post! Might be my favourite so far, thanks!
ReplyDeleteWe have nearly the same policy with the kids... but I disagree about forcing the kids to eat one bite of everything and I think there are many alternatives before heading to processed foods or take-out.
ReplyDeleteI don't want meals to be about power struggles and I respect that they might have real dislikes and likes that are beyond just getting used to the taste of a food. I also respect that there are times that, like me, the kids just don't feel like eating something in particular.
My mother-in-law forced my hubby to eat eggs as a young child, she tried on a regular basis for about 3 years and finally stopped when he started throwing up just at the site of them on his plate. (I don't get why she didn't stop when he was throwing up after putting it in his mouth as he did for most of those 3 years) There is no going around it... the taste and smell of eggs repulses him to this day... he can now stand being in the house when I make eggs and can site down with the kids when they eat them, but if I boil eggs he has to step out of the house when I peel them.
So for my kids, I always make sure that they have something they like on their plates but if they say they don't like something or don't feel like eating it. we don't offer different meals, but we also won't force them. It is not my body and it is not my right to force them to eat something that they don't want to eat. That is a power struggle I refuse to have.
I do however suggest small changes...
Raw veggies instead of cooked, putting everything in a wrap instead of eating each item on its own, an added dip etc... I also bring them shopping and they have a say in the food menu for the week and help prepare meals on a regular basis.
I didn't eat broccoli until a few years ago when my son wanted the "little trees" at the grocery store. For my while life I thought I hated it, but now I realize that it wasn't the broccoli itself, it was the way it was cooked, now I love broccoli but I still can't make myself eat it if it has been steamed or boiled. I love it raw or roasted.
Giving them say in what we all eat, getting them involved in the meal, whether it be the whole meal or a component and changing things up is the key for us. No power struggles but also no short order cooking or resorting to processed foods...
Also, we never spoon fed mushy non-flavoured baby food. My kids ate what we ate and self-fed from the moment they started eating solid foods. I make everything from scratch and we eat a lot of ethnic foods so they are used to eating curries and spices and a range of flavours and textures.
And for me... I stopped sugar in my coffee about 10 years ago and then stopped adding milk when we quit dairy for the whole family and I couldn't stand the taste of milk alternatives in my coffee... It took only a few days to get used to it because we switched to grinding our own coffee at the same time...
Not sure if it's myth or fact, but I always put at least a drop of milk into my coffee or tea, to help prevent teeth staining.
ReplyDeleteBut never any sugar!
I prefer to follow Ellyn Satter's Division of Responsibility: the parent decides what to serve and when to serve it, the child decides what to eat and how much. My kids don't have to try anything, but they usually do and they eat a wide variety of foods, but not always consistently. We just don't have junk food in the house, we might have it out but in smaller amounts.
ReplyDeleteI grew up being served horrible food (not junk, just badly made and not very good quality) and at 12 I decided to become a vegetarian and cook for myself. I don't know if my palate changed, but I started to eat completely differently and I don't know if there's even one (homemade) meal I grew up eating that I would eat now. I guess that was my adolescent rebellion: no more overcooked frozen veggies and chewy breaded pork chops!
I would totally agree. We have three kids (8,6 & 3) who all heartily dig into salads, and many types of fish regularly and it makes people's jaws drop with surprise. But they've had all this put in front of them since they got teeth so its really not a surprise that they like the stuff.
ReplyDeleteNow imagine Grandma's surprise when dishing up alphagetti yesterday and no one would touch it!
@ Michelle, absent-mindedly picking up someone else's coffee that's got sugar in it now makes me want to gag and spit it out: but in the distant past, I routinely used 2 tsp of sugar. Come to think of it, as a reformed smoker I have a similar intolerance for cigarette smoke, although in former years I would easily smoke upwards of 60 cigarettes daily.
ReplyDeleteI tried the same with coffee. First I dropped the sugar (which didn't take long), then the milk (which took longer). I then decided to drop the coffee altogether, and just drink warm water. After a while, it was easier not to warm the water up and just drink cold water. I then dispensed with the water altogether and just walked around with an empty mug.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that if I stopped in the street and put the empty mug on the floor people would drop coins into it. After a while, I made enough money to buy myself a cup of tea.
sweet taste induced analgesia
The idea of getting your kids to try things over and over again may work for kids without food intolerances. But I was sickly as a kid and it turns out that all those meals of things I was intolerant to, were making me sick.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't have any idea how to tell the difference between preference and intolerance. It took me years of trial and error to find my core intolerances and there are more I am guessing.
It took me a while to get used to the taste of coffee without sugar. Now I hate it in my coffee.
ReplyDeleteI still enjoy having cream now and then.
I wouldn't be caught putting skim milk in my coffee. yuck.
As you probably know, Yoni, full-fat milk is not harmful, and is beneficial for those that can tolerate it.
Although raw milk is much better.
I don't see any advantage in drinking skim milk, since you are well aware that fat is not harmful for heart health, and fat doesn't make you fat (unless accompanied by a lot of processed carbs)
I do enjoy your articles, even though I often strongly disagree.
Mike
LOL, I love what FrontierPsychiatrist said. I mean, where does it end? Why have any enjoyment at all?
ReplyDeleteBut I do agree with the premise that children's tastes are much more plastic than those of grown-ups, and I would like my daughter to be able to enjoy a wide variety of the bounty of what grows on the earth (with the exception of pork, shellfish and cheeseburgers) -- and not only all the different flavors Doritos come in.
I like my coffee with low-fat milk or soy milk, and some sweetener (not sugar) and yes, it contains calories, but it also tends to keep me from getting hungry during the day, which is both helpful and detrimental.
A good prespective in helping understand why it is so difficult for adults to learn to eat differently when trying to lose weight. Thank you. On another note, I often wonder if mentally, we define ourselves when we are kids as 'not liking brocolli' and then never venture to try it again. I hear it quite a bit, I used to hate ____ but now as an adult I love it! So, keep trying new stuff - but, as Yoni says - you don't have to finish it if you don't like it.
ReplyDeleteI know the point of this blog entry is about our children. But I am still focused on your coffee experiment. Could I really give up my non-fat, 12 ounce, single shot cappuccino every morning? And switch to just black coffee? I'm intrigued and tempted to try it. Carol
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I have suffered from obesity issues for years. I had weight loss surgery 3 years ago which has helped, but I still haven't lost all of the weight I would like to lose. Still I can't complain about 107lbs. When we had our son, now 32, we knew he would have some bad genes to contend with. We followed your food ideas with him just as you do with your daughters. There was no requirement to clean the plate, we didn't play "airplane" to get him to eat when he went through that toddler stage of no eating. We spent a couple of years giving him really tiny helpings because he would look at a full plate and say "I'm full." As he got older, our only requirement was that he try everything. He didn't have to eat it if he didn't like it. By the time he was 11 or so, he was loving salad, enjoying shrimp. Being Italian-American, we always had slightly spicy and very flavorful food in the house. We also encouraged him to be active. He loved to ride his bike. Today he is a gourmet cook. He's tried just about everything. In addition, he's tall and slim and bikes to work every day. It IS possible to overcome genes. He is currently working to lose weight, but still - I wish I had looked like that at his age!
ReplyDeleteThere do seem to be some serious individual differences though. I have two kids, both of whom I have raised with the exact same methods; they watch me eat vegetables of all kinds because I love them, I serve vegetables at every meal, and I ask them to try bites of new foods although I don't force whole servings. One has likes and dislikes like any person, but will eat a wide range of foods and is steadily increasing his tolerance. The other eats virtually nothing voluntarily but refined starch, and gags when we ask her to eat innocuous things like corn. The thing about exposure leading to liking is that different children may be more or less tolerant to exposure, and I'm not sure exposure leading to gagging is helping or not.
ReplyDeleteQuick update on the 'Great Coffee Experiment'. You are right! This morning I realized that the black coffee I was drinking had changed from my initial response of vile, awful, gag-me, bitter to.... not totally bad. I did find switching to a very good, mellow coffee bean helped. I'm committed to seeing this experiment through. I really appreciate you blogging about it. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but if this is possible, where else can I change up my taste buds? Carol
ReplyDeleteI thought this particular idea of switching to black coffee was really interesting. It's been in my mind for a while that drinking it black is a healthier option anyway, so I decided to repeat the experiment with myself.
ReplyDeleteI only drink one cup a day, and have never been into adding sugar, and today is my sixth cup. I wouldn't say I'm loving it as much as a soy latte yet, but I am enjoying each cup already.
An important factor for me is that I seek the caffeine hit. If black coffee is the only way I'm going to get it, then I'm guaranteed to enjoy it to some extent.
One thing I'm particularly noticing is that drinking black coffee makes me pay more attention to the flavour of the coffee. I'm learning to tell the difference between an excellent and a regular cup of coffee. (Wouldn't ever drink a bad one anyway.) Luckily my favourite cafe serves the real deal.
I look forward to genuinely preferring the black version and at the current rate of adjustment I predict it will take another two weeks.
Yoni are you still drinking black, or have you switched back?
I'm still black and I won't go back.
ReplyDeleteVery happy with the black coffee.
Bought a roaster and roasting my own as well.