Broccoli? No thanks. tomatoes? Yuck. Cheese? Bah! Children can sometimes be very picky at the dinner table. But there may be good reasons for a child to be skeptical.
Children’s senses are generally more sensitive to taste, and this can make them feel disgusted by some foods.
Sweet is attractive to children, while they usually find sour and bitter disgusting. This tendency is most apparent in babies, who often cry when given something sour or bitter.
When they get a little older, it’s not so bad anymore. This is due to habituation and changes in taste perception.
In one trial, it was much easier for children between the ages of five and 10 than for their mothers to pick up small concentrations of the bitter propylthiouracil, which is found in broccoli, spinach, cabbage and cheese.
The researchers discovered that children’s sense of taste is strongly influenced by the TAS2R38 gene. That forms a protein that regulates sensitivity to a number of bitter substances, and children with a specific variant of it were more disgusted by bitter food.
Because the mothers also had that gene, but did not react as strongly to bitter anymore, the influence of the gene probably diminishes over time.
New is dangerous
Pickiness is also an evolutionary safety mechanism. For example, the chance of poisoning is much greater with something that tastes bitter than with other flavors.
Another evolutionary trick is ‘neophobia’ or fear of new things – like food. Neophobia is most common between the ages of one and six.