John Myers
When children don’t like something, they just follow their instincts. In adulthood, this aversion diminishes.
Children don’t like broccoli or Brussels sprouts
There are types of vegetables that children hate. At the forefront are broccoli, cauliflower or Brussels sprouts, which are a taste challenge even for some adults. Cabbage varieties – experts also speak of Brassica vegetables – are very healthy: they not only contain vitamins and minerals, but also folic acid, iron and fiber. Brassica vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, red cabbage, white cabbage, savoy cabbage, kohlrabi and romanesco.
What these cabbages have in common: They taste bitter, especially for children. Because they contain a substrate with the complicated name S-methyl-l-cysteine sulfoxide. When chewing in the mouth, this substrate reacts with the bacteria that occur naturally in our saliva. This creates sulphurous substances that children find extremely unpleasant , researchers report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The result: it tastes “yucky”. The following applies: the higher the concentration of sulfur compounds in children’s saliva, the greater the likelihood that they will not like cabbage.
What tastes bitter can be poisonous
Children’s rejection of bitter foods is instinctive. He says: “What tastes bitter could be poisonous.” Our aversion to bitter substances is therefore due to the fact that our brain still works in places as it did in the Stone Age . For our ancestors, finding food was about survival. What they found on their way through fields and steppes, they also wanted to eat and used their sense of taste to distinguish edible from poisonous foods.
- Bitter = bah, ugh – dangerous
- Sweet = delicious – harmless
Poisonous plants taste bitter because toxins are naturally bitter. Our brain signals: Caution! Please don’t eat!
This mechanism made a lot of sense thousands of years ago. Not today. Nevertheless, it is still anchored in us in early childhood and has to be trained away. Just like our fondness for sugar: children find food and drinks much less sweet than adults because in the Stone Age sugary foods increased the chance of survival. A simple rule for small children. In the course of life, experience is added: Because the older we get, the more our sense of taste can change. The fact that children leave the Brussels sprouts on the plate does not have to stay like this for the rest of their lives.
Taste can be trained
Because the sense of taste can be trained. The mechanism is quite banal: children remember that Brussel sprouts don’t make them die or feel bad. So they associate it less and less with negative things and save it as harmless. But it takes a little time for them to find Brussels sprouts tasty. Children need about eight to 15 attempts to get used to the “green stuff” . Parents have an important role model function here. You can show your offspring: Look here, I like it and it’s healthy. You can eat that too!
Taste changes over the years
With increasing age, however, the Brussels sprouts topic recedes more and more into the background. In adults, the concentration of sulfur compounds in the saliva no longer plays a role when eating Brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc. Means: Over the years we get used to the unpleasant, sulphurous taste of cabbage.
