Tasting notes: can the sound of wind chimes make kids eat broccoli?

An Oxford professor says high-pitched music accentuates the sweetness in food, making it more palatable to children. But there are other ways to get little ones to eat their greens

Parents of young children know that mealtimes can turn into a horrendous battleground, but it could be worse – you could add the sound of wind chimes into the mix. Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford whose work in multisensory eating has influenced the chef Heston Blumenthal, has found that playing high musical notes can make a child more likely to eat yucky food such as broccoli. “The idea with chirpy music such as wind chimes is that it contains the high-pitched musical notes that have been shown to bring out the sweetness in a food that contains a sweet note,” he says, adding that fussy eaters should be encouraged to play with their food.

Dr Gemma Witcomb, a lecturer in psychology at Loughborough University and a co-developer of the Child Feeding Guide, says fussiness peaks around 18 to 24 months. “This coincides with a cognitive shift when infants are more aware of their environment and therefore what they are eating,” she says. “Suddenly, everything seems new. Being fearful of new things is evolutionarily adaptive; our ancestors needed to be fearful of new foods so that they didn’t ingest potentially harmful foods.” We have an innate preference for sweet foods, but many vegetables are bitter, “so they take time to learn to like”. Some children are more sensitive to taste than others; some are more sensitive to texture.

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from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2voumoh