I'll only eat it if you eat it first!
We are faced with an important task every day: we have to decide what we want to eat at all our meals and in between! And unlike koalas, for example, who only have one food source, namely eucalyptus leaves, we can - and do - eat a wide variety of things. A varied diet can be fun and enjoyable, but it also means that we have to think a lot about what we want and should eat.
What is suitable? What is healthy? These decisions are already difficult for adults, but what do they mean for babies and toddlers who have much less experience with food choices?
We know from psychology that even babies have a few tricks up their sleeve when it comes to food. For example, they prefer sweet to sour and prefer the taste of food they have tried before to new flavours. And yet toddlers are far from perfect when it comes to choosing their food; as parents know, they are all too happy to put dangerous or disgusting things in their mouths.
Toddlers choose the food that people from their own culture eat.
My colleagues and I are working on the idea that young children follow the people around them when deciding what to eat. Regardless of age, we humans are rarely left to our own devices when it comes to choosing our food. We often work together to procure and prepare food, and eating often takes place in a social context - at the dinner table, for example. Young children therefore have many opportunities to observe other members of their culture choosing, preparing and eating food. The social context gives them the opportunity to find out what tastes good.
In a study with one-year-old children, we tested whether young children pay attention to other members of their culture when deciding what to eat. We showed the children film clips of two different women: One spoke the children's native language (English) and the other spoke a language they were unfamiliar with (French). In each film, the women also ate something different. The English-speaking woman ate a fruit sauce from a green bowl, while the other ate a different flavour from a purple cup. After the children had seen the film clips, we let them choose one of the two sauces and evaluated which one they chose.
«Bring your child together with other children of the same age who enjoy eating vegetables»
Dr Kristin Shutts
We found that the children chose the food that was eaten by the woman who spoke their mother tongue. In other words, they tended to orientate their choice of food towards the choice of a member of their culture. Children are therefore interested in what the people around them eat, even as infants, and are influenced by this. And they are particularly interested in what the members of their own culture do.
Other research shows that children are influenced by what the people around them eat even beyond infancy. One of my favourite studies is by researcher Leann Birch. She investigated how to get preschool children to eat foods they said they didn't like. Birch recognised the influence that peer pressure can have and decided to put children next to peers who liked to eat what the children themselves didn't like. So when Mary said she didn't like carrots, Birch had her sit with children who did like carrots at dinner for a week. When Birch analysed the children's preferences at the end of the week, she found that they had changed their minds. Children who had previously disliked a particular food began to like it when they sat at a table with their peers who enjoyed eating it.
So a tip for parents who have difficulty getting their children to like certain foods is to bring them together with other children who have different or more varied preferences.
Whether friends, teachers or parents: they all have an influence on preferences
In recent years, we have gathered a lot of information about how children develop preferences for certain foods and eating habits. But there is still a lot to do. In my lab, we are currently working on finding out what other factors (apart from language) can stimulate children's interest in different foods. Do toddlers also tend to adopt the preferences of other toddlers, as is the case with older children? And how can we ensure that babies and children develop healthy eating habits from an early age and grow up to be healthy adults?
Whatever the answer may be, it is likely that other people, i.e. friends, parents and teachers, play an important role.
Picture: Pexels
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr Kristin Shutts is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2006 and her postdoctoral training at Harvard and Childern's Hospital in Boston. She is interested in how young children learn from the people around them.
JACOBS FOUNDATION
As one of the world's leading charitable foundations, the Jacobs Foundation has been committed to promoting research in the field of child and youth development for 25 years. The Foundation aims to provide sustainable support for future generations by improving their development opportunities.