Quotes from Bee Wilson

Likes and dislikes cannot be reduced to molecules and genes. It means that our food habits are not final and fixed but adaptable and open, if only we will give ourselves half a chance. We did not come into the world disliking bitter greens; we were taught to dislike them by our environment. Taste may be identity but it is not destiny. The hope is that while we are stuck with our genes, the environment is something that can change.

Feeding children too often can make them forget what their own hunger feels like. Large portions lead to overeating. And giving food to calm a distressed child teaches them that unhappiness is a reason to eat.

There may also be more biological reasons why stigmatising obesity entrenches weight gain. Feeling victimised is very stressful and it is well established that cortisol, the main human stress hormone, encourages overeating. It's known from rodent studies that cortisol messes up the normal cues for hunger and fullness.

It's a truism that we know what we like and we like what we know. If you ask young children which foods they most detest, they tend to be the ones they have never actually tasted, often vegetables.

Often, however, the remembering through food is bittersweet, because even when you have tracked down every last herb and spice, the missing ingredient is the cook. You find you don't want pasta "just like mama used to make"; you actually want mama herself.

Force-feeding is a crime of passion, driven by a parent's desire to see a child eat; as with other crimes of passion, the perpetrator has lost sight of the loved one's autonomy.

It is a lonely occupation, being someone who wrestles to control their responses to food, given that modern life is steeped with things to eat, both real and imaginary.

Every day, children are exposed to messages - whether on giant hoardings and TV ads or from looking in friends' lunchboxes - telling them that they should like the very foods that will do them the most harm.

Indulgence makes a child fat. Restriction makes a child fat and unhappy.

Learning how to eat better - which is quite different from going on a diet - is within anyone's grasp.

Our tastes are learned in the context of immense social influences, whether from our family, our friends, or the cheery font on a bottle of soda.

The Japanese must be doing something right in the way they eat, given that they live longer on average than people form any other nation.

Every culture seems to have certain challenging vegetables that children find hard to love at first bite.

The true objective is independence: for a child to reach the point where they can regulate their own intake of food and to choose the things that will do them good while giving them pleasure. Weaning them off milk is one thing. But the real task for a parent is to wean children off needing you.

It's not just that people learn to tolerate beetroot: they switch from dislike to adoration.

Foodies trumpet their love of the hated vegetables of childhood: cauliflower and Brussel sprouts join beetroot as dinner party favourites.

We obsess about the properties of various ingredients: the protein, the omega oils, the vitamins. But this is getting ahead of ourselves. Nutrients only count when a person picks up food and eats it. How we eat - how we approach food - is what really matters.

If we are going to change our diets, we first have to relearn the art of eating, which is a question of psychology as much as nutrition. We have to find a way to want to eat what's good for us.

In Japan, food filters into every aspect of the culture.

All the foods you regularly eat are the ones that you learned to eat. Everyone starts life drinking milk. After that, it's all up for grabs.

Many parents, especially those who themselves struggle with their weight, believe that a child is incapable of self-control when it comes to eating.

From our first year of life, human tastes are astonishingly diverse. As omnivores, we have no inbuilt knowledge of which foods are good and safe. Each of us has to use our senses to figure out for ourselves what is edible, depending on what's available. In many ways, this is a delightful opportunity. It's the reason there are such fabulously varied ways of cooking in the world.

Part of eating well is making friends with hunger.

Almost the only places in the world that have lower obesity averages than Japan are countries such as Ethiopia or North Korea where there is widespread hunger and food itself is scarce.