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Summary
Summary
We do not come into the world with an innate sense of taste and nutrition; as omnivores, we have to learn how and what to eat, how sweet is too sweet, and what food will give us the most energy for the coming day. But how does this education happen? What are the origins of taste?
In First Bite , the beloved food writer Bee Wilson draws on the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and nutritionists to reveal that our food habits are shaped by a whole host of factors, including family, culture, memory, gender, hunger, and love. An exploration of the extraordinary and surprising origins of our tastes and eating habits-from people who can only eat foods of a certain color to an amnesiac who can eat meal after meal without getting full- First Bite also shows us how we can change our palates to lead healthier, happier lives.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"Most of what we learn about food happens when we're children-when we're sitting at the kitchen table (if you're lucky enough to have one), being fed," says Wilson (Consider the Fork), a food writer and historian. Wilson takes a scholarly approach in this smart and telling journey that outlines food habits and where they originate. Mixing science with anecdotes, she incorporates past studies, including one landmark research study on infants' inherent patterns of taste, explicating the sometimes-conflicting theories scholars spun from the outcome, Wilson debunks the notion that appetite is genetic and the idea that the body naturally selects what it needs. Old reports are countered by the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and biologists. Using brief tales, Wilson details many disorders across the consumption spectrum in an insightful and earnest tone that appeals to food-lovers and parents. Discussing everything from adults with stringent eating patterns to gendered weight misperceptions and changes in cultural norms, Wilson delineates how diets develop and, more importantly, how to make healthy modifications. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An exploration of the notion that we can change our early food habits. Following her lively and strikingly original history of culinary tools and techniques, Consider the Fork (2012), Wilson enters the increasingly crowded category of diet and nutrition with a well-informed, albeit overly earnest guide to healthy eating and a well-balanced diet. She demonstrates the ways our tastes and eating habits, formed at our earliest stages of development and influenced by friends, siblings, and overwhelmingly aggressive marketing campaigns, can often lead to a variety of eating disorders. "My premiseis that the question of how we learn to eatboth individually and collectivelyis the key to how food, for so many people, has gone so badly wrong," writes the author. "The greatest public health problem of modern times is how to persuade people to make better food choices." Wilson maintains a strong belief in change and sets out to prove how it is possible. In such chapters as "Likes and Dislikes," "Feeding," "Hunger," "Disorder," and "Change," the author shares numerous anecdotes from her personal lifeshe had to overcome challenges as an overweight teenager and later as a mother of picky eatersto underscore wide-ranging case-study results, often with encouraging outcomes. A profound example is the huge cultural shift in eating that has taken place in Japan over the past 50 years; prior to that, the current diet of fresh fish and rice was not customary. In a sublimely entertaining early chapter, flashes of M.F.K. Fisher or Diane Ackerman may come to mind as Wilson describes how the subtle influences of scent and taste can trigger memory, "the single most powerful driving force in how we learn to eat; it shapes all of our yearnings." With generous measures of grounded wisdom and solid research findings, the book should attract and possibly inspire broad groups of readers struggling with eating-related issues; for others, it may be of less interest. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
FIRST BITE: How We Learn to Eat, by Bee Wilson. Illustrated by Annabel Lee. (Basic Books, $16.99.) So much of what forms our "chaotic" relationships with food - our likes and dislikes, willingness to experiment and even our nostalgic attachments - we develop as infants. But rather than view food habits as fixed and immutable, Wilson lays out strategies to gradually "unlearn" troubling behaviors and tastes. DRAGONFISH, by Vu Tran. (Norton, $15.95.) A troubled Vietnamese refugee in Oakland suddenly leaves behind her husband and reappears in Nevada; as he searches for his wife, he is dragged through both Las Vegas's ugly underbelly and the horrors of her past. Our reviewer, Chris Abani, called Tran's novel "a renegotiation of terms in which the past is not a place of nostalgia but one that carries all the trauma of war, and the present is not enough to mitigate that." BATTLING THE GODS: Atheism in the Ancient World, by Tim Whitmarsh. (Vintage, $16.95.) In the roughly 1,000-year period Whitmarsh studies, godlessness was one of a number of acceptable religious views. Religion, for the Greeks, was part and parcel of civil engagement; it was not until they were absorbed by the Roman Empire that society became largely Christianized, and godlessness scorned. THE MARK AND THE VOID, by Paul Murray. (Picador, $17.) In the midst of the Irish banking crisis, Paul, a thwarted novelist, asks to shadow Claude, a French analyst in Dublin, at work, as inspiration for a new project. But what Paul really has in mind is a setup for a heist: He's looking to reverse his fortunes by robbing a bank, not literary success. The deeply amoral financial sector is a prime target for Murray's rollicking caper. MY HISTORY: A Memoir of Growing Up, by Antonia Fraser. (Anchor, $16.) The author, a British historian known for her biography of Mary Queen of Scots, reflects on her aristocratic childhood and literary passions. Our reviewer, Liesl Schillinger, called Fraser's account "the history of a writer's love affair with her vocation, and her nostalgia for the childhood 'wonderland' that engendered it." GOLD FAME CITRUS, by Claire Vaye Watkins. (Riverhead, $16.) In Watkins's dystopian California, virtually all the region has been evacuated after a blistering drought, but Ray and Luz are among the few holdouts, choosing instead to scavenge and take shelter in an abandoned mansion. But after they find a toddler (though not the marauders to which she seems to belong), the couple are motivated to seek a better life for themselves and the child. DESTINY AND POWER: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, by Jon Meacham. (Random House, $20.) Meacham, an executive editor at Random House and former editor of Newsweek, is sympathetic to his subject, tracing the 41st president's political ascent and stumbles. The account is particularly cleareyed about the elder Bush's influence on his son's presidential tenure, and reveals some of his opinions about George W.'s decisions.
Choice Review
In this unique study, Wilson looks at how eating disorders and behaviors such as fussiness, pickiness, and food phobias are learned and overcome. She uses scientific and social studies along with interviews and anecdotes to explain how feeding and eating habits created by family, school, and/or mental health issues cause some individuals to develop a complex approach to food early in life. The author discusses several approaches to changing food behaviors, among them introducing new foods and retraining children and adults to develop positive eating behaviors. Writing eloquently on how complicated eating has become, Wilson looks at--among other things--the role that memory and nostalgia play in one's eating life; how school and government programs address hunger; and how dietitians are changing the way they work with obese patients to increase weight loss. Though Wilson mentions extreme situations--for example, children whose eating behaviors result in hospitalization--the book will resonate with all who have problems with food, not just those with acute issues. In the final chapter, "Change," she offers a fascinating account of the healthfulness of the Japanese diet. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Skye Hardesty, Georgia State University
Library Journal Review
Wilson (Consider the Fork) draws on research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and nutritionists to reveal that food-related habits are shaped by multiple factors including family, culture, memory, gender, hunger, and love. Featured here are people who only eat foods of a certain color, toddlers whose preferences are limited to hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches, and researchers who have pioneered effective ways to introduce new foods into a child's diet. While there are many solid books about getting children and babies to eat, ranging from straightforward cookbooks to more detailed feeding manuals such as Jill Castle and Maryann Jacobsen's Fearless Feeding, most focus on the practical aspects; not on the reasons behind developing food habits. With chapters addressing particular foods such as milk and cake and discussions on topics including eating disorders, pickiness, and binging, this book provides in-depth discussion of what makes us indulge, enjoy, crave, dislike, and choose the tastes and provisions that we do. Verdict This work will appeal to food scientists, parents wishing to know the roots of their children's meal choices, and curious readers in general.-Dawn -Lowe-Wincentsen, Oregon Inst. of Technology, Portland © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
