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First Bite: How We Learn to Eat
Fortnum & Mason Food Book of the Year 2016
We are not born knowing what to eat. We all have to learn it as children sitting expectantly at a table. For our diets to change, we need to relearn the food experiences that first shaped us.
Everyone starts drinking milk. After that it’s all up for grabs.
We are not born knowing what to eat; we each have to figure it out for ourselves. From childhood onwards, we learn how big a portion is and how sweet is too sweet. We learn to love broccoli – or not. But how does this happen? What are the origins of taste? And once we acquire our food habits, can we ever change them for the better?
In First Bite, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson draws on the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists and nutritionists to reveal how our food habits are shaped by a whole host of family and culture, memory and gender, hunger and love. She looks at the effects siblings can have on eating choices and the social pressures to eat according to sex. Bee introduces us to people who can only eat food of a certain colour; toddlers who will eat nothing but hot dogs; doctors who have found radical new ways to help children eat vegetables. First Bite also looks at how people eat in different parts of the we see how grandparents in China overfeed their grandchildren, and how Japan came to adopt such a healthy diet (it wasn’t always so).
The way we learn to eat holds the key to why food has gone so disastrously wrong for so many people. But Bee Wilson also shows that both adults and children have immense potential for learning new, healthy eating habits. An exploration of the extraordinary and surprising origins of our taste and eating habits, First Bite explains how we can change our palates to lead healthier, happier lives.
We are not born knowing what to eat. We all have to learn it as children sitting expectantly at a table. For our diets to change, we need to relearn the food experiences that first shaped us.
Everyone starts drinking milk. After that it’s all up for grabs.
We are not born knowing what to eat; we each have to figure it out for ourselves. From childhood onwards, we learn how big a portion is and how sweet is too sweet. We learn to love broccoli – or not. But how does this happen? What are the origins of taste? And once we acquire our food habits, can we ever change them for the better?
In First Bite, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson draws on the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists and nutritionists to reveal how our food habits are shaped by a whole host of family and culture, memory and gender, hunger and love. She looks at the effects siblings can have on eating choices and the social pressures to eat according to sex. Bee introduces us to people who can only eat food of a certain colour; toddlers who will eat nothing but hot dogs; doctors who have found radical new ways to help children eat vegetables. First Bite also looks at how people eat in different parts of the we see how grandparents in China overfeed their grandchildren, and how Japan came to adopt such a healthy diet (it wasn’t always so).
The way we learn to eat holds the key to why food has gone so disastrously wrong for so many people. But Bee Wilson also shows that both adults and children have immense potential for learning new, healthy eating habits. An exploration of the extraordinary and surprising origins of our taste and eating habits, First Bite explains how we can change our palates to lead healthier, happier lives.
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First published December 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 488 reviews
July 9, 2016
This is an informative book about eating: about how taste preferences are formed, and how we can change them, and why it's so hard to start eating healthily when you're used to the opposite, and about eating disorders and their treatment. One of the things I learned from this book is that I do not enjoy reading about eating for nearly 300 pages, so if you love foodie books, your rating will likely be higher than mine. Those three stars represent my level of enjoyment rather than the quality of the book.
In case you, too, are unlikely to read the entire book, here's the short version. Tastes are developed, not inborn (as anyone who's ever deliberately cultivated a taste for something you once disliked knows). So, anyone can learn to like healthy food – which is what anyone who wants to eat healthier must do, because nobody sticks with a diet that feels like punishment at every meal. The best way to develop good taste in children is to start very young: babies are particularly open to new flavors at 4–7 months of age. But once you're past that, let children choose among healthy foods without forcing anything down their throats, and keep offering small amounts until they start to like it. This actually works at any age, even for extremely picky eaters.
But the way we eat in the first world has gone badly wrong, with an abundance of cheap food offering poor nutrition. It doesn't help that our methods of training children to eat are inherited from a time when famine, rather than obesity, was the primary danger: hence the fact that "cleaning your plate" is considered virtuous. People are healthier when they regulate their eating based on actual hunger, rather than external cues like portion size, or dealing with emotions by eating.
If you are going to read a book related to diet in some way, I suspect that this is the sanest option you'll find: the author isn't pushing any particular diet, or cutting out any category of food entirely. She does recommend eating primarily fruits and veggies and limiting the processed foods (which I think all can agree is the healthiest way to eat), but focuses on the importance of finding dishes you enjoy, and then expanding that list – nobody likes everything, which is okay. And enjoying a slice of cake every now and then won't hurt you, though a diet primarily based on processed and sugary foods likely will.
So I certainly found some interesting material here, and I think it's useful information for anyone looking to improve their own diet, and especially for parents who want to teach their children to eat right. It will be an interesting read also for foodies interested in the historical and scientific information the author presents; Wilson provides a good historical overview of the topic and discusses many relevant studies. However, I found the book a little padded and longer than necessary, as a reader who was interested in the information but didn't relish the time spent reading it. For the only book about food and eating that I'm likely to read, though, it seems like a good choice.
In case you, too, are unlikely to read the entire book, here's the short version. Tastes are developed, not inborn (as anyone who's ever deliberately cultivated a taste for something you once disliked knows). So, anyone can learn to like healthy food – which is what anyone who wants to eat healthier must do, because nobody sticks with a diet that feels like punishment at every meal. The best way to develop good taste in children is to start very young: babies are particularly open to new flavors at 4–7 months of age. But once you're past that, let children choose among healthy foods without forcing anything down their throats, and keep offering small amounts until they start to like it. This actually works at any age, even for extremely picky eaters.
But the way we eat in the first world has gone badly wrong, with an abundance of cheap food offering poor nutrition. It doesn't help that our methods of training children to eat are inherited from a time when famine, rather than obesity, was the primary danger: hence the fact that "cleaning your plate" is considered virtuous. People are healthier when they regulate their eating based on actual hunger, rather than external cues like portion size, or dealing with emotions by eating.
If you are going to read a book related to diet in some way, I suspect that this is the sanest option you'll find: the author isn't pushing any particular diet, or cutting out any category of food entirely. She does recommend eating primarily fruits and veggies and limiting the processed foods (which I think all can agree is the healthiest way to eat), but focuses on the importance of finding dishes you enjoy, and then expanding that list – nobody likes everything, which is okay. And enjoying a slice of cake every now and then won't hurt you, though a diet primarily based on processed and sugary foods likely will.
So I certainly found some interesting material here, and I think it's useful information for anyone looking to improve their own diet, and especially for parents who want to teach their children to eat right. It will be an interesting read also for foodies interested in the historical and scientific information the author presents; Wilson provides a good historical overview of the topic and discusses many relevant studies. However, I found the book a little padded and longer than necessary, as a reader who was interested in the information but didn't relish the time spent reading it. For the only book about food and eating that I'm likely to read, though, it seems like a good choice.
September 7, 2015
If you read a lot of food/foodie/nutrition books, which I do, the first part of this book will seem very familiar. There's the talk about obesity, processed foods, the disconnect between what we know to be good for us and our eating habits. Many of the same studies put in an appearance--the starving Minnesotans, the one that let babies eat whatever they wanted from a selection of whole foods, and so on---but Wilson's recap is thoughtful and informative. Where she heads into new territory is discussing how we learn to dis/like the foods we dis/like. It turns out picky eating isn't all or even mostly genetic. It turns out we can relearn what foods we like and increase the variety of what we eat at any age. I was fascinated by the history of advice for baby feeding and the discussions of various eating disorders. Let me just say, after reading about some of the cases in the book, I will never call any of my kids picky eaters again.
This would make a great book club book, if only because food is a subject of such universal torture/interest/love, and trying to get kids to "eat healthy" consumes most moms, if only with guilt.
Although my son is 14, and I'd decided he was never gonna be a kid who ate many vegetables, I was inspired by FIRST BITE to try one of the techniques they use on toddlers. I cut a green bean into pea-sized chunks and put it on his plate with one twig from a broccoli florette. The result? He ate them! He even had another green bean, cut up. Dare I hope he will one day graduate to eating an entire bean, or even a few of them? We'll see. But next I'm trying a pea-sized chunk of a roasted beet.
(Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to review a galley copy.)
This would make a great book club book, if only because food is a subject of such universal torture/interest/love, and trying to get kids to "eat healthy" consumes most moms, if only with guilt.
Although my son is 14, and I'd decided he was never gonna be a kid who ate many vegetables, I was inspired by FIRST BITE to try one of the techniques they use on toddlers. I cut a green bean into pea-sized chunks and put it on his plate with one twig from a broccoli florette. The result? He ate them! He even had another green bean, cut up. Dare I hope he will one day graduate to eating an entire bean, or even a few of them? We'll see. But next I'm trying a pea-sized chunk of a roasted beet.
(Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to review a galley copy.)
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May 16, 2022A fascinating examination of why we eat what we eat.
January 20, 2016
As someone who has spent most of her life struggling with weight and diets, this book was an incredible revelation. First Bite is not some self righteous call to abandon one's unhealthy eating habits overnight, but it explores how our habits develop, the emotions and experiences that shaped them, and how to be cognisant of this history. It explains how to slowly start to change one's relationship and perception of food, and to adopt tastes that make all meals seem like comfort food. Highly, highly recommended.
May 22, 2019
Just as with the other Bee Wilson book I read previously, I was left feeling a bit disappointed by this one.
The first half of the book was incredibly boring, with long chapters that focussed on feeding (your own) children, rather than using childhood as an illustration of how adults once learned to eat. The second half of the book was definitely more interesting and discussed eating disorders and how taste preferences are formed, and how you can manipulate it through exposure.
While reading, I never had the feeling that I was reading about something very exciting or about groundbreaking science. A lot of the studies that Wilson discussed in length are from the previous century, and although they may still serve as an important turning point in the study of eating behavior, they are just not that relevant anymore as studies that were done on a way larger scale in the 21st century.
Furthermore, a lot of ideas keep getting repeated over and over, and I feel like I have read certain sentences in multiple chapters in the book, and also in her other book (that I read first), This Is Not A Diet Book. The in-depth explanation behind her statements that I was looking for after reading TINADB, unfortunately did not come in this book.
I don’t know if my interest in food books has dwindled, or that my education has taught me how to distinguish pop-science from actual science-based books, but I think Bee Wilson is just not the food-writer for me. I think this book would have interested me more if I had young children myself, because the book pays a lot of attention to how to feed them better, and how to help picky eaters expand their horizons.
The first half of the book was incredibly boring, with long chapters that focussed on feeding (your own) children, rather than using childhood as an illustration of how adults once learned to eat. The second half of the book was definitely more interesting and discussed eating disorders and how taste preferences are formed, and how you can manipulate it through exposure.
While reading, I never had the feeling that I was reading about something very exciting or about groundbreaking science. A lot of the studies that Wilson discussed in length are from the previous century, and although they may still serve as an important turning point in the study of eating behavior, they are just not that relevant anymore as studies that were done on a way larger scale in the 21st century.
Furthermore, a lot of ideas keep getting repeated over and over, and I feel like I have read certain sentences in multiple chapters in the book, and also in her other book (that I read first), This Is Not A Diet Book. The in-depth explanation behind her statements that I was looking for after reading TINADB, unfortunately did not come in this book.
I don’t know if my interest in food books has dwindled, or that my education has taught me how to distinguish pop-science from actual science-based books, but I think Bee Wilson is just not the food-writer for me. I think this book would have interested me more if I had young children myself, because the book pays a lot of attention to how to feed them better, and how to help picky eaters expand their horizons.
November 5, 2015
Advanced reading copy review Due to be published December 1, 2015
I enjoyed Bee Wilson's previous book "Swindled" so was happy to try her latest food-related book "First Bite: How We Learn to Eat". This is not food porn, lusciously describing our first tastes of beloved dishes. Instead it is a scientific observation of how we learn to like and dislike certain foods and spices and how those preferences shape our diets. It is also a guide to how we can change our eating habits towards more healthy and nutritious foods without losing any sense of pleasure in eating.
Despite the parade of studies and their results, the book is at times fascinating, largely interesting and educational. The author personalizes some of the theories presented with her own struggles with food. We learn about the psychology and physiology of eating and how culture plays as much of a part in our diets as society and advertising. While not all chapters were as interesting to me as others, I still never felt the need to skim through to the better parts. While the book would be the greatest help to new parents who want to start their children off on the right foot nutritionally, it would also be helpful to adults who want to change their dietary habits and try new things.
I enjoyed Bee Wilson's previous book "Swindled" so was happy to try her latest food-related book "First Bite: How We Learn to Eat". This is not food porn, lusciously describing our first tastes of beloved dishes. Instead it is a scientific observation of how we learn to like and dislike certain foods and spices and how those preferences shape our diets. It is also a guide to how we can change our eating habits towards more healthy and nutritious foods without losing any sense of pleasure in eating.
Despite the parade of studies and their results, the book is at times fascinating, largely interesting and educational. The author personalizes some of the theories presented with her own struggles with food. We learn about the psychology and physiology of eating and how culture plays as much of a part in our diets as society and advertising. While not all chapters were as interesting to me as others, I still never felt the need to skim through to the better parts. While the book would be the greatest help to new parents who want to start their children off on the right foot nutritionally, it would also be helpful to adults who want to change their dietary habits and try new things.
November 12, 2020
Interesting book about learning to eat and how that process continues throughout our lives. If I cared more about scientific studies I'd give this a higher star rating but for me the studies were gone into in exhaustive detail that I wish had been simply summed up for me. The details could easily have been included in an appendix for accuracy and interested readers. So I skimmed a lot of that information. I was also disinterested in food disorders so more skimming there.
However, there was plenty of interest otherwise. I was especially interested in the way that popular childcare was influenced by an early food study which childcare experts of the time took in precisely the opposite way than the scientist interpreted it. I also was taken by the influence of culture which reigns supreme over science, such as in the case of food supplements which went over great in Africa but were viewed with disgust in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Definitely worth reading ... or skimming.
However, there was plenty of interest otherwise. I was especially interested in the way that popular childcare was influenced by an early food study which childcare experts of the time took in precisely the opposite way than the scientist interpreted it. I also was taken by the influence of culture which reigns supreme over science, such as in the case of food supplements which went over great in Africa but were viewed with disgust in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Definitely worth reading ... or skimming.
February 24, 2019
There is so much goodness packed into this book. I recommend it to anyone who eats. 😀. I especially recommend it to parents. There is info with inspiration for everyone.
April 14, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed the research and presentation of the book by Wilson, as much as I enjoy a good Mary Roach book or A Natural History of the Senses because it is well-researched and straightforwardly organized, as evidenced by the twenty some-odd pages of notes and research but also that my favorite chapter was actually the epilogue called This is Not Advice where she summarizes the main points of the book. I basically read this chapter out loud to my husband after he heard bits and pieces of studies or findings from the book as I read it, but this truly encapsulates everything-- my favorite-- "eating well is a skill".
She covers a lot of group, but again, because it is organized in its presentation, it was all digestible and early understood, though of course there were chapters that I was less interested in, yet there were also sections that I was leaned in to or nodding my head in agreement with (being a 'maintainer' but also about feeding children).
Thank you to Bee Wilson for a sophisticated and educational reading on eating.
Hook: Natural science, nonfiction, compelling, contemporary, thought provoking, fact-filled, introspective
Updated in 2024: This book influenced me in many ways and I fell down the rabbit hole of Wilson's work and then food writing / food memoir too. Rereading this brought back so many memories but the new one will be that I just MET Bee Wilson on Thursday night in Hudson, NY and now have my book signed by her-- the paperback edition that I was gifted last year actually includes *my words* writing about First Bite in 2016 too. It was a magical evening.
She covers a lot of group, but again, because it is organized in its presentation, it was all digestible and early understood, though of course there were chapters that I was less interested in, yet there were also sections that I was leaned in to or nodding my head in agreement with (being a 'maintainer' but also about feeding children).
Thank you to Bee Wilson for a sophisticated and educational reading on eating.
Hook: Natural science, nonfiction, compelling, contemporary, thought provoking, fact-filled, introspective
Updated in 2024: This book influenced me in many ways and I fell down the rabbit hole of Wilson's work and then food writing / food memoir too. Rereading this brought back so many memories but the new one will be that I just MET Bee Wilson on Thursday night in Hudson, NY and now have my book signed by her-- the paperback edition that I was gifted last year actually includes *my words* writing about First Bite in 2016 too. It was a magical evening.
February 11, 2018
This very readable book argues clearly and cogently that eating habits aren’t inevitable and can be changed. It is most definitely not a diet book, though. Wilson marshals a range of scientific research and history to explain how babies and children learn which foods they do and don’t like and how our adult habits are formed. I found this fascinating, as I had no idea about it before. Did you know what babies can learn to like tastes at four months? So young! The book covers childhood experiences of food in great detail, as these shape what we eat and how we feel about it as adults. Wilson's tone is sympathetic and thoughtful, noting that it’s very difficult to know what and how much is healthy to eat currently. Rather than focusing on the food industry, though, she explains how individuals and families experience it. I appreciated that her focus wasn’t entirely on the developed world and that she didn’t treat her case studies of picky and disordered eaters in a voyeuristic fashion.
I found 'First Bite' a little difficult to read in places, not due to style but due to content. I was a very picky eater as a child and have had problems with food all my life, so some parts hit rather close to home. In some ways, Wilson’s book is very encouraging, as it argues you can improve your relationship with food at any age. However, it also doesn’t downplay how much effort can be involved. Wilson explains that giving people advice on lifestyle changes doesn’t work: they have to want to change rather than feeling defensive. I spotted an interesting contradiction between apparently effective treatments for picky eating and anorexia. The former requires freedom to try unfamiliar foods in tiny amounts until reassured they’re safe to eat, without family pressure. The latter apparently requires the opposite: meals with the family in which the sufferer is firmly encouraged to eat more. The chapter about hunger also made me realise what a mysterious sensation it is. Hunger cannot be medically measured via any hormone, enzyme, or similar. It can only be self-reported and different people may not experience it in the same way.
Undoubtedly this book will cause any reader to reflect on their eating habits and how they might want to change them. It taught me a great deal about the biology and history of feeding babies and children, as well as Japanese cuisine. Wilson refuses to give specific advice, but ends the book with a bullet point list of things about eating she wishes she’d learned earlier. This includes a suggestion to eat soup, which I did after finishing the book.
I found 'First Bite' a little difficult to read in places, not due to style but due to content. I was a very picky eater as a child and have had problems with food all my life, so some parts hit rather close to home. In some ways, Wilson’s book is very encouraging, as it argues you can improve your relationship with food at any age. However, it also doesn’t downplay how much effort can be involved. Wilson explains that giving people advice on lifestyle changes doesn’t work: they have to want to change rather than feeling defensive. I spotted an interesting contradiction between apparently effective treatments for picky eating and anorexia. The former requires freedom to try unfamiliar foods in tiny amounts until reassured they’re safe to eat, without family pressure. The latter apparently requires the opposite: meals with the family in which the sufferer is firmly encouraged to eat more. The chapter about hunger also made me realise what a mysterious sensation it is. Hunger cannot be medically measured via any hormone, enzyme, or similar. It can only be self-reported and different people may not experience it in the same way.
Undoubtedly this book will cause any reader to reflect on their eating habits and how they might want to change them. It taught me a great deal about the biology and history of feeding babies and children, as well as Japanese cuisine. Wilson refuses to give specific advice, but ends the book with a bullet point list of things about eating she wishes she’d learned earlier. This includes a suggestion to eat soup, which I did after finishing the book.
September 29, 2023
Took me a while to finish, but overall this was a really cool, informative book. If I ever have kids, I’ll probably buy it to have on hand. I think it’s really encouraging that we can learn to like new foods and eat healthier because we genuinely enjoy it. I liked the way the book was formatted and written. I’ve been working on making healthy meals and this definitely inspired me more!
August 3, 2021
An interesting look at why we choose the foods we do and how upbringing and other factors can affect these decisions. Thus far, I've had a lot of success with Bee Wilson's books.
April 19, 2022
The minute this book entered my consciousness (reviewed in the Guardian, of course), I couldn't wait to read it. While I generally consider myself a pretty tolerant person, one of the few things that really winds me up are fussy eaters, so a book exploring how and why we develop our tastes and dislikes promised to be very interesting. Wilson groups extreme fussy eating (where disliked foods are basically phobias) as an eating disorder as serious as anorexia, an idea which certainly gave me pause for thought - although I'm still not convinced that your common or garden adult fussy eater is suffering from a mental disorder so much as a bit undisciplined! And, as becomes clear throughout the book, it certainly takes discipline to break the fussy eating habit... The treatment ideas she discusses such as repeated exposure (see The Man Who Ate Everything for more on this) aren't exactly new to me, but Wilson brings them together and offers a good mix of theory with practical tips, whether the reluctant eater is yourself or your child.
It's also not only a book about fussy eating, but really all the issues people today have with food - overeating, comfort eating, binging and purging - and Wilson also shares her own food experiences and history, along with a lot of other people's stories, so there's really something for anyone looking to mend their relationship with food, or just interested in food psychology.
Her writing is very enjoyable and easy to read, if sometimes rather hyperbolic - for example, aparently 'no home-cooked food, no matter how delicious, can match the power for bringing people together in misty-eyed recollection of industrially produced food.' Sorry, what? That certainly hasn't been my exerience, and I don't think that I and the people I'm around are that unusual. But the overall importance of her topic meant that I could forgive the occassional headscrachting overstatements.
My one concern is whether this book is most likely going to be preaching to the wide-eating, food literate crowd, rather than those it could help the most. But if anyone who is a fussy eater but wants to change does pick it up, I think it will certainly be very helpful and encouraging.
Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read this.
It's also not only a book about fussy eating, but really all the issues people today have with food - overeating, comfort eating, binging and purging - and Wilson also shares her own food experiences and history, along with a lot of other people's stories, so there's really something for anyone looking to mend their relationship with food, or just interested in food psychology.
Her writing is very enjoyable and easy to read, if sometimes rather hyperbolic - for example, aparently 'no home-cooked food, no matter how delicious, can match the power for bringing people together in misty-eyed recollection of industrially produced food.' Sorry, what? That certainly hasn't been my exerience, and I don't think that I and the people I'm around are that unusual. But the overall importance of her topic meant that I could forgive the occassional headscrachting overstatements.
My one concern is whether this book is most likely going to be preaching to the wide-eating, food literate crowd, rather than those it could help the most. But if anyone who is a fussy eater but wants to change does pick it up, I think it will certainly be very helpful and encouraging.
Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read this.
December 31, 2015
A nonfiction book about the psychology of eating: how and why people become picky eaters, and how to change; how the body signals and interprets hunger; eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia (a really interesting detail I'd never heard before is that there's apparently increasing evidence that anorexia is genetic and not highly linked to pressure on teenage girls to diet - though of course such pressure is still negative and can cause other problems); cultural pressure to link certain tastes to gender (for instance, sweets for women and meat for men); different cultural traditions of how to introduce new foods to children; basically, every topic you could imagine related to taste preferences.
All of that was quite interesting and fun to read about. My main problem with the book is that, unlike Wilson's previous books, the information is not presented simply for the sake of being interesting, but with the attitude that it's necessary to learn these things in order to deal with the modern world's obesity problem. It's not a diet book (thankfully!) but over and over again Wilson emphasizes that it's important to do such research and apply such findings because no one knows how to eat anymore and we need to fix that. Which, if you're perfectly happy with how you eat, is a bit annoying to read, and certainly not what I expected from the book. So, be warned. If that's not too much of a problem for you, there is a lot of cool new information here, and I'd give it a qualified recommendation.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
All of that was quite interesting and fun to read about. My main problem with the book is that, unlike Wilson's previous books, the information is not presented simply for the sake of being interesting, but with the attitude that it's necessary to learn these things in order to deal with the modern world's obesity problem. It's not a diet book (thankfully!) but over and over again Wilson emphasizes that it's important to do such research and apply such findings because no one knows how to eat anymore and we need to fix that. Which, if you're perfectly happy with how you eat, is a bit annoying to read, and certainly not what I expected from the book. So, be warned. If that's not too much of a problem for you, there is a lot of cool new information here, and I'd give it a qualified recommendation.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
July 23, 2020
En bok om våra matvanor och hur de uppstår – om hur vi lär oss att äta som barn och om att vi kan lära om. Intressant, men inte mindblowing. Mycket fokus på den angloamerikanska delen av världen trots exempel från andra länder – för en läsare i nordisk kontext känns det inte nödvändigtvis som om utbudet av ohälsosam mat i matbutikerna är riktigt lika överväldigande här.
Läser boken samma sommar som jag fascineras av min drygt ettåriga brorsdotters stora intresse för mat – fin kombination.
Läser boken samma sommar som jag fascineras av min drygt ettåriga brorsdotters stora intresse för mat – fin kombination.
September 3, 2024
I was absolutely captivated by this book from start to finish.
Ms. Wilson chronicles the development of taste in humans. She explains it from both scientific and social perspectives. I learned an incredible amount about why people approach food the way they do, and how people of any age can learn to enjoy new and more varied flavors and textures.
I have been fascinated with health and nutrition for years, and I’ve devoured so many books on the subject. However, this book opened my eyes to new thinking about preferences and how they impact our lives. I was incredibly caught up in it, and now I have a massive book hangover. How often does that happen with nonfiction?
Audio version.
Ms. Wilson chronicles the development of taste in humans. She explains it from both scientific and social perspectives. I learned an incredible amount about why people approach food the way they do, and how people of any age can learn to enjoy new and more varied flavors and textures.
I have been fascinated with health and nutrition for years, and I’ve devoured so many books on the subject. However, this book opened my eyes to new thinking about preferences and how they impact our lives. I was incredibly caught up in it, and now I have a massive book hangover. How often does that happen with nonfiction?
Audio version.
September 6, 2015
First Bite is a bit of a departure for Bee Wilson. She usually writes about food history, as in her excellent books Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat and Swindled:The Dark History of Food Fraud, as well as her many articles and reviews in magazines such as The London Review of Books.
In this book she investigates how and why we acquire food preferences, and the consequences of those preferences. This involves her delving into biology, chemistry, history, sociology, and a great deal of personal experience.
The science and history of how we decide what and what not to eat is fascinating, although I was not as interested in the emphasis on the many ways that children fail to eat properly or even at all sometimes. Probably those who are parents or who have vivid memories of their own childhood experiences with food will appreciate these discussions more.
Perhaps the most important finding that Wilson details is that food preferences are not set in stone -- you can learn to enjoy food that you've always avoided. Further, whole societies (Japan is her best example) can change their diets for the better. It gives us all a bit of hope that we can reverse the alarming trends of the past several decades.
Wilson also branches out into new territory by actually providing some recommendations on how to deal with the food idiosyncrasies of children and with our own diets as adults.
(Thanks to NetGalley and Basic Books for a digital review copy.)
In this book she investigates how and why we acquire food preferences, and the consequences of those preferences. This involves her delving into biology, chemistry, history, sociology, and a great deal of personal experience.
The science and history of how we decide what and what not to eat is fascinating, although I was not as interested in the emphasis on the many ways that children fail to eat properly or even at all sometimes. Probably those who are parents or who have vivid memories of their own childhood experiences with food will appreciate these discussions more.
Perhaps the most important finding that Wilson details is that food preferences are not set in stone -- you can learn to enjoy food that you've always avoided. Further, whole societies (Japan is her best example) can change their diets for the better. It gives us all a bit of hope that we can reverse the alarming trends of the past several decades.
Wilson also branches out into new territory by actually providing some recommendations on how to deal with the food idiosyncrasies of children and with our own diets as adults.
(Thanks to NetGalley and Basic Books for a digital review copy.)
August 24, 2016
This book is getting a fourth star from me for two main reasons. First, if I had to describe this book in one word, it would be “hopeful” and I feel like hope is something many of us need to hear about both our personal eating habits and the rising obesity trends around the world. Second, this was super readable (though I really like cognitive psychology so that could be my personal preference). Overall, this book presents the argument that eating well is a skill – something we learn, can unlearn, and can always improve upon. Drawing on tons of research, the book presents evidence for how our taste preferences are formed and just how malleable they can be. I also really enjoyed the sections about “disordered eating” beyond eating disorders, because YES – eating your feelings or eating for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger or NOT eating because of feelings are all issues. More than anything, this book is about the craziness of our culture in how we think about how children eat, picky eaters, and even the different ways we perceive feeding females versus males. Lots of interesting ideas here and some great practical advice for raising children with healthy, varied palettes as well as “introducing” adults to new foods and flavors.
June 9, 2016
Actual rating : 3.5 stars
August 16, 2021
This was a really interesting and eye opening book about food and how we eat.
The book covers Likes and Dislikes, Memory, Children’s Food, Feeding, Brothers and Sisters, Hunger, Disorder and change. After each chapter is a With Food mini section that talks about a specific food. There is With Beets, With milk, With Birthday Cake, With Lunchbox, With Chocolate, With Breakfast Cereal, With Potato Chips and With Chili (as in the pepper.)
The author shares interesting facts, cool studies and information from different types of professionals like psychologists and nutritionists. I learned all kinds of new things I have never read anywhere else. Some of it is about the psychology of food but some of it is history related.
“Life under slavery was not typical. […] When these foods were available (protein), they went automatically to the father, both to give flavor to the dullness of his bread-and-potato diet and to give him the strength to work.”
We learn here that in the past, both with slaves but also with the general population during the depression or other times of poverty, the man of the house was allowed to have the protein or more filling portions. This was because he had to do the heavy lifting work. During the past, women stayed at home to take care of the house and children so they didn’t need the protein as much. This is probably why meat and potatoes is seen as a man’s food and salad, soufflé and dainty foods are seen as a woman��s food.
Another interesting thing I read is that soup is considered a more filling food in our minds, even if it’s isn’t actually more calories than something else. People were given a cup of apple juice and another group of people were given warmed apple juice in a bowl with a spoon and told it was apple soup. Those who had the soup reported being more full than those who had the juice, even though it was the exact same amount. Eating slowly, one spoonful at a time seems to make us feel fuller. Perhaps the warmth is a factor too.
All parents know of the formula vs. breastfeeding debate. But did you know that all breastmilk is not equal?
“It’s been found that breastfed babies in Spain have a different range of bacteria in their guts than breastfed babies in Sweden. A mother’s milk will vary in composition and flavor depending on her own diet. It may taste garlicky in France or be scented with star anise in China. Slightly surprising, not everyone recognises it as the ideal food for newborns. […] There are remote rural cultures where the people believe that babies will be harmed by colostrum, the rich yellowish milk that mothers produce in the first few days after birth. Parents may give babies honey or sweet almond oil for the first three days instead, because they fear – wrongly – that this early milk is too “strong” for a tiny baby to digest; these far-off communities do not know that giving honey to a baby creates a risk of infant botulism.”
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in food, diet, health or nutrition.
The book covers Likes and Dislikes, Memory, Children’s Food, Feeding, Brothers and Sisters, Hunger, Disorder and change. After each chapter is a With Food mini section that talks about a specific food. There is With Beets, With milk, With Birthday Cake, With Lunchbox, With Chocolate, With Breakfast Cereal, With Potato Chips and With Chili (as in the pepper.)
The author shares interesting facts, cool studies and information from different types of professionals like psychologists and nutritionists. I learned all kinds of new things I have never read anywhere else. Some of it is about the psychology of food but some of it is history related.
“Life under slavery was not typical. […] When these foods were available (protein), they went automatically to the father, both to give flavor to the dullness of his bread-and-potato diet and to give him the strength to work.”
We learn here that in the past, both with slaves but also with the general population during the depression or other times of poverty, the man of the house was allowed to have the protein or more filling portions. This was because he had to do the heavy lifting work. During the past, women stayed at home to take care of the house and children so they didn’t need the protein as much. This is probably why meat and potatoes is seen as a man’s food and salad, soufflé and dainty foods are seen as a woman��s food.
Another interesting thing I read is that soup is considered a more filling food in our minds, even if it’s isn’t actually more calories than something else. People were given a cup of apple juice and another group of people were given warmed apple juice in a bowl with a spoon and told it was apple soup. Those who had the soup reported being more full than those who had the juice, even though it was the exact same amount. Eating slowly, one spoonful at a time seems to make us feel fuller. Perhaps the warmth is a factor too.
All parents know of the formula vs. breastfeeding debate. But did you know that all breastmilk is not equal?
“It’s been found that breastfed babies in Spain have a different range of bacteria in their guts than breastfed babies in Sweden. A mother’s milk will vary in composition and flavor depending on her own diet. It may taste garlicky in France or be scented with star anise in China. Slightly surprising, not everyone recognises it as the ideal food for newborns. […] There are remote rural cultures where the people believe that babies will be harmed by colostrum, the rich yellowish milk that mothers produce in the first few days after birth. Parents may give babies honey or sweet almond oil for the first three days instead, because they fear – wrongly – that this early milk is too “strong” for a tiny baby to digest; these far-off communities do not know that giving honey to a baby creates a risk of infant botulism.”
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in food, diet, health or nutrition.
July 8, 2017
I found this book fascinating and recommend it to anyone interested in food, cooking, psychology, children eating habits or the history of eating. I am going to seek out other books by Bee Wilson. It was an engaging read for an interesting topic. I also liked the mini chapters on certain foods.
One take away is that the WHO (World Health Organization) states that newborns should not eat anything other than breast milk (or formula) until 6 months old. The studies Ms. Wilson state show that this is not a good idea long term. She and other scientists state the best time to expose babies to new foods and tastes is between 4-8 month range. Other countries, like France, do this with great results. If you wait until after this time, they will be much more adverse to new flavors. They still advocate getting most nutrients from breast milk, but that parents should take advantage of this short window to get their babies trying new things. I honestly will look into that more if we have more children. I followed the doctors advice and waited until 6 months, but my children are not great natural eaters. We eat healthy and my kids always have to eat what we do, but they are resistant eaters.
I also have been putting into practice the idea of "tiny bites." It has already transformed my 6 and 3 year old into cucumber lovers, they both used to hate them! I hope to continue to do this to get them to try and enjoy new foods. I also hope to help myself get over my adversity to fish. I also love the idea of teaching children to be good eaters, to enjoy healthy foods and that our tastes can change!
I also found the history really interesting! All in all, a great read!
One take away is that the WHO (World Health Organization) states that newborns should not eat anything other than breast milk (or formula) until 6 months old. The studies Ms. Wilson state show that this is not a good idea long term. She and other scientists state the best time to expose babies to new foods and tastes is between 4-8 month range. Other countries, like France, do this with great results. If you wait until after this time, they will be much more adverse to new flavors. They still advocate getting most nutrients from breast milk, but that parents should take advantage of this short window to get their babies trying new things. I honestly will look into that more if we have more children. I followed the doctors advice and waited until 6 months, but my children are not great natural eaters. We eat healthy and my kids always have to eat what we do, but they are resistant eaters.
I also have been putting into practice the idea of "tiny bites." It has already transformed my 6 and 3 year old into cucumber lovers, they both used to hate them! I hope to continue to do this to get them to try and enjoy new foods. I also hope to help myself get over my adversity to fish. I also love the idea of teaching children to be good eaters, to enjoy healthy foods and that our tastes can change!
I also found the history really interesting! All in all, a great read!
September 16, 2024
Worth the read! Definitely got some good tips on how to help my future kids develop healthier eating habits, especially as babies.
August 24, 2025
An interesting (albeit rather long) look at why we eat what we eat. I enjoyed the chapters on how to change our tastes. I disliked the heavy focus on weight loss / “the obesity epidemic”.
February 3, 2023
A high quality book that I learned a lot of tangible things from, however not something I found myself reaching frequently.
October 8, 2025
A fascinating sociological approach that goes hand in hand with Ed Yong's I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, which I'm reading synchronously.
Wilson focuses on culture, societal expectations and family dynamics, and on people as individuals. Yong changes the scale and goes further inwards, until we become ecosystems within ourselves. If you're looking for a larger picture, you'll get it from these two angles.
Wilson focuses on culture, societal expectations and family dynamics, and on people as individuals. Yong changes the scale and goes further inwards, until we become ecosystems within ourselves. If you're looking for a larger picture, you'll get it from these two angles.
August 3, 2022
Nice, easy read. Good emotional and touching bits as well as jam packed with great information. However, I find it is missing something - I just can't put my finger on what it is. 4/5
September 17, 2016
I was looking forward to reading Bee Wilson’s upcoming novel First Bite: How We Learn To Eat. A British food writer and historian, I was anticipating a most intriguing read! However, I wasn’t expecting a huge portion of the book to be devoted towards early developmental childhood psychology. And that is how I felt when reading this.
She talks about children as picky eaters and child obesity. This obviously would be better geared toward those with children and ways to watch their nutrition. However, for me with two grown daughters, I can only say I will keep as reference for when I have grandchildren. Had I been aware of this, I perhaps would have sat down with that expectation.
On that note, there is a chapter on “much of what we learn about eating comes from the way our parents feed us.” This is a truly hard pill to swallow. At times, it is the habits we share with our children that can impact how our children view eating. At times, views on consumption directly and indirectly influences the direction of what food is and what it means to us. A family’s income also influences eating habits as much as guilt and peer pressure.
Towards the end she gets into what I was most interested in.
Our memory of food lends itself into what we not only were exposed to, but the feelings that came with that memory. The author states that eating is a form of learned behavior. But for me it is much more that that. It’s the experiences while eating that can be pleasurable or that our taste buds just do not agree with.
Our perception of eating can evolve as we begin to expose ourselves to what is changing in our economy and society. The past few years, there has been a sprouting of neighborhood farmers markets. There has been an economic shift in price for organic. Restaurateurs are touting cage free. What is significant is that our behaviors towards eating can evolve just by the changes that have taken place and what is yet to come.
How our past exposure to food culture and what triggers how our eating habit carries into our food consumption and the behaviors we associate with certain foods we were exposed to throughout our lives. Yes, our early childhood does impact our exposure, but a lot of that is not by choice; hence, I don’t feel that should have been the basis of half her book.
I was looking for more than “we are what we eat”. It felt like this was a psychology piece on the need to unlearn eating behaviors in order to change our eating habits. Our eating habits are a part of us -and not all eating habits should be associated as to whether we are healthy or unhealthy eaters.
Just wanted to share I thought this novel would be about the history of eating habits and one’s senses, culture, economics, et.al. This stems from my expectation based on the title, the book jacket, and a few book blurbs I can across which had piqued my interest.
Disclaimer: I received this book in exchange for a fair review. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated for this review.
She talks about children as picky eaters and child obesity. This obviously would be better geared toward those with children and ways to watch their nutrition. However, for me with two grown daughters, I can only say I will keep as reference for when I have grandchildren. Had I been aware of this, I perhaps would have sat down with that expectation.
On that note, there is a chapter on “much of what we learn about eating comes from the way our parents feed us.” This is a truly hard pill to swallow. At times, it is the habits we share with our children that can impact how our children view eating. At times, views on consumption directly and indirectly influences the direction of what food is and what it means to us. A family’s income also influences eating habits as much as guilt and peer pressure.
Towards the end she gets into what I was most interested in.
Our memory of food lends itself into what we not only were exposed to, but the feelings that came with that memory. The author states that eating is a form of learned behavior. But for me it is much more that that. It’s the experiences while eating that can be pleasurable or that our taste buds just do not agree with.
Our perception of eating can evolve as we begin to expose ourselves to what is changing in our economy and society. The past few years, there has been a sprouting of neighborhood farmers markets. There has been an economic shift in price for organic. Restaurateurs are touting cage free. What is significant is that our behaviors towards eating can evolve just by the changes that have taken place and what is yet to come.
How our past exposure to food culture and what triggers how our eating habit carries into our food consumption and the behaviors we associate with certain foods we were exposed to throughout our lives. Yes, our early childhood does impact our exposure, but a lot of that is not by choice; hence, I don’t feel that should have been the basis of half her book.
I was looking for more than “we are what we eat”. It felt like this was a psychology piece on the need to unlearn eating behaviors in order to change our eating habits. Our eating habits are a part of us -and not all eating habits should be associated as to whether we are healthy or unhealthy eaters.
Just wanted to share I thought this novel would be about the history of eating habits and one’s senses, culture, economics, et.al. This stems from my expectation based on the title, the book jacket, and a few book blurbs I can across which had piqued my interest.
Disclaimer: I received this book in exchange for a fair review. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated for this review.
October 4, 2015
First Bite is all about how people develop their sense of taste. As someone who has always been a picky eater (although I'd like to think I've branched out more now that I'm older), I'm fascinated by how people come to like certain things and not others. It's an exploration of something that is related to nutrition but also isn't like other nutrition books I've read. First Bite isn't really concerned with stressing what's healthy and unhealthy. It's just exploring why people come to eat certain foods and not others. I don't think that's something many people think about, yet it's such an interesting question.
I learned so, so much from this book. It raised so many new questions that I've never stopped to think about. Sure, I'd thought before how different cultures have different tastes, and I knew it had to come from what they were fed growing up. But I didn't think about it beyond that. Wilson explores that in First Bite though, including why some cultures come to tolerate spicy foods easier than others. I'd always assumed that people who like spicy food developed some sort of tolerance where they can't taste the spiciness as much anymore. It turns out that I was wrong, and the real theory about how people come to tolerate spice wasn't what I expected.
First Bite seems to explore so much, from how the diet of the mother affects breast milk and a baby's future diet to why junk food has become such a big component of today's diets. All of it was fascinating and some really great information. I think anyone is bound to learn something from this book, and it really makes you stop and think about how your own diet came about. But it's never preachy about what you should or shouldn't be eating, even if it makes you stop to think about why your favorite foods are your favorite foods.
I'd recommend this book to just about everyone. We all eat, and we've all developed our own unique tastes that have been influenced by a number of factors. This book is a great way to learn more about how that happened and get you thinking about how you wound up eating the diet that you have.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
http://hmweasley-blog.blogspot.com/20...
I learned so, so much from this book. It raised so many new questions that I've never stopped to think about. Sure, I'd thought before how different cultures have different tastes, and I knew it had to come from what they were fed growing up. But I didn't think about it beyond that. Wilson explores that in First Bite though, including why some cultures come to tolerate spicy foods easier than others. I'd always assumed that people who like spicy food developed some sort of tolerance where they can't taste the spiciness as much anymore. It turns out that I was wrong, and the real theory about how people come to tolerate spice wasn't what I expected.
First Bite seems to explore so much, from how the diet of the mother affects breast milk and a baby's future diet to why junk food has become such a big component of today's diets. All of it was fascinating and some really great information. I think anyone is bound to learn something from this book, and it really makes you stop and think about how your own diet came about. But it's never preachy about what you should or shouldn't be eating, even if it makes you stop to think about why your favorite foods are your favorite foods.
I'd recommend this book to just about everyone. We all eat, and we've all developed our own unique tastes that have been influenced by a number of factors. This book is a great way to learn more about how that happened and get you thinking about how you wound up eating the diet that you have.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
http://hmweasley-blog.blogspot.com/20...
May 6, 2016
A good, thoughtful book that would have benefitted from stricter editing - I found it repetitive in places, although possibly because I did not need much convincing that what and how we eat is largely learned, not determined by genes. That said, I think in making that point, it glosses over some thorny issues - most significantly our near universal love for sugar, fat and salt. The fact itself is mentioned nearly on every page, but then curiously sidestepped: the book seems to suggest that once we learn to like vegetables, all will be well. It also cannot quite decide if it's a self-help book for parents or a meditation on food and eating in general. Still, it makes many excellent points and people who have children or consider having them would do well to read it.
January 25, 2016
A very interesting read on how to change and influence our eating habits and likes/dislikes at any stage of our life. The research is extensive, and even the anecdotal studies are fascinating. I have learnt what I should have done differently with my children when they were really tiny, and how I need to lay off making them finish what's on their plates. A super book for anyone who wants the inside scoop about better and healthier eating, with side dishes of learning about eating disorders and the history of food. I very much recommend it!
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