挑食原来不怪你

20160517ou 一中两外锵锵三人行 今日话题： 挑食原来不怪你 Nick: An anthropologist who has done a study at the university of Pennsylvania has done some research and she has asked a lot of different qualities about the texture the flavor, other qualities of the food. Things like the color or more hygiene related questions, like how is the food served? The study found that selective eating (or picky eating) is especially common among children. Almost 50% of children are reported to be picky eaters. There may be good evolutionary biological reasons for this, because when children are young they are not always aware of what is around them. Obviously in the modern day environment you are not going to surround your child with things that are going to poison them if they eat it. Lincoln: It’s a leftover mechanism from much more primitive times. Nick：Back in the day there were a lot of things that you could come into contact with a lot of things that would make you sick or do you harm if you ate them. Children have evolved this picky eating mechanism that would stop them from getting sick if they ate certain foods. Lincoln: There is also the fact that children tend to have more taste buds than adults and you lose those taste buds as you become older. Just to give an example of this; when I was a child, I absolutely hated broccoli. I could not stand it. My parents were at the dinner table for hours on end because they would say that no one is leaving the table until we finish this broccoli. And I said to them, ‘settle in guys, I’m not eating broccoli’. Now I absolutely love it, I don’t even know why I decided that I now like it. Yoyo: Another scientist at Yale said that people who avoided strong tasting foods like alcohol or anything else actually have more taste buds than non-choosy people. Lincoln: The idea is that those people actually experience flavors more. We drink. We have alcohol and really spicy food that burn your taste buds, so maybe you’re not able to taste those subtle little flavors. Little dollops of sauce; you can’t taste it as much because you’ve burned them all of with spicy Sichuan hot pot. So something to keep in mind Wu You. It is very true that children often much more fussy in terms of what they like to eat. A lot of parents can get very annoyed with these things but you have to understand that there are reasons for these things, even if we don’t understand them fully.