If a nation can change its eating habits for the better, as Japan did after the second world war, then there is hope not only for the toddler who will eat only strawberry fromage frais, but also for the adult who persists in believing, as my father-in-law does, that the merest hint of any fruit other than stewed apple will make them gag. What she had felt instinctively – that it must be possible for people to switch from disgusted to delighted, picky to omnivorous, eternally guilty to blissfully guilt-free – was backed up by much of the available evidence. And the results are, for those inclined to worry about these things, generally encouraging. As a food writer who had an overly close relationship with sugar as a teenager, Wilson set out to discover how much, or how little, is set in stone early on when it comes to taste – whether by genetics, gender or family dynamics. But in some ways, it encapsulates her message overall. But if a kid adores beetroot, cabbage, nutmeg and blue cheese, who gives a damn if they can’t stand mushrooms?īee Wilson’s account of the Finnish experience of Sapere, in essence, a more egalitarian take on the French concept of savoir vivre, and one in which some 7,000 professionals in the Scandinavian country are now trained, comes towards the end of First Bite, as she looks for pointers to a future in which children (and, by extension, adults) everywhere are saved from a life of addiction to bland and unhealthy processed foods. Of course, the study surmised, there would always be some foods they dislike. Children schooled in what is known as the Sapere movement (from the Latin for “to taste” and “to know”) were not only more willing to try new foods, but less likely to respond to the sweetness of fizzy drinks and other sugary treats, preferring, instead, more punchy flavours.

Attitudes to eating in children could, it seemed, be radically altered after all – and with them, levels of obesity. The results of this experiment were extremely positive: so much so, in fact, that the lessons were extended to all Finnish pre-schools. One morning, the children might go out foraging for berries the next, they might play a sensory game involving the scent of lemons.

Instead, they were to explore ingredients with their senses: “the hard crackle of rye crisp bread, the soft fuzz of a peach, the puckering sourness of raw cranberries”. These lessons were to have little to do with encouraging the children to eat their greens or even with attempting to steer them away from junk food. I n 2004, the kindergartens of Jyväskylä, a lakeside city in Finland, received funding to give all children aged one to seven instruction in “varied food habits”.

First bite