How does growing up influence your food preferences?

I think most kids are naturally drawn towards sugars and starches (which are just another form of sugar). Most kids will react badly to anything with spice or zest or complex flavor. They crave predictability and want their KRAFT mac & cheese not that fancy mac & cheese (as if any mac & cheese were fancy) and stuff like that.

Mind you, my sister’s kids are actually pretty adventurous by kid standards. So there are exceptions for sure. We’re all individuals at the end of the day.

As I’ve gotten older, I like things with strong flavors, but I still don’t like more than what I would call moderate spice. I like vanilla ice cream that actually tastes like vanilla—- not that it’s vanialla because it’s bland. I hate things like guacumole which covers and hides the flavors of the food it comes with.

Well when I was a kid I LOVED that Kraft mac & cheese, but now that I’m a kid I LOVE that FANCY mac & cheese!

When I was little, I didn’t like Indian food, I didn’t like spicy food, I didn’t like coffee. Now I love Indian food, I love spicy foods and I am willing to try things that I haven’t had before. I love coffee and must have it every morning haha.

My great-neice and -nephew eat all kinds of food. His parents believe in letting them explore their food, like eating with their fingers ages 1–4. If they want to try ketchup on their cauliflower, they can. They also encourage them to help with the cooking and built a small platform with a railing around it and steps to climb so the kids can be high enough to help. For christmas I gave him a child’s cookbook and some utensils. (It was a cookbook published by America’s Test Kitchen and I highly recommend it. The recipes are things a 4 year old can make by themselves with supervision.) He loves it and goes over the recipes, figuring out which utensils should be used with each one.

I think when we’re young we eat what’s presented to us, and that depends on our parents. As we grow up we can try foods that we might never have been introduced to and make up our own minds.

My mother, despite her best efforts, was a terrible cook. She really didn’t enjoy it.

As a result, I had the wrong idea about so many foods for so long.

I thought fish was nasty smelling and dry; beef was chewy and leathery; chicken was tasteless with the consistency of saw dust; all vegetables were colorless and limp; and pasta was soggy and mushed together.

Later, when I started dating g my wife (whose family were excellent cooks) I saw how good these foods could look and taste. Then I started working at a farm and learned so much about where food comes from.

Today I love fish and beef and chicken and so on, and even think I’m a bit of a foodie.

I was lucky both parents were excellent cooks.

My dad’s dad cooked Sunday meals so my grandmother could have the day off, my dad started help when he was about 12. Beef roast, hams, leg of lamb and poultry, they had a chicken coop.

My mom graduated from a one room school at 14, it was during the depression. She went to work at a resort in Maine, that was frequented by the rich from New York, first waiting tables and then moving into the kitchen.

I had interesting friends in the 1950s including a boy of Japanese heritage; I would eat raw Sea Urchin and other raw fish when I was 12 years old.