The moment
The lunch bell rings and the room fills with the clatter of lids. One box smells of lemon rice, another of fried onions, and the warm air near the window carries both. A boy pushes three pieces of bitter gourd to the edge of his box and covers them with a chapati. A girl eats with her eyes on the friend beside her, chewing without noticing. The teacher says what teachers everywhere say at this hour. Finish quickly. Don’t waste.
Twenty minutes pass. Thirty children have eaten, and not one of them has been asked what anything tasted like.
The practice
Once a week, set aside ten minutes before the meal for a tasting. Use the whole class, or groups of six to eight. You need one food, cut into small pieces, enough for every child to have two. A guava, a cucumber, an amla, a handful of roasted chickpeas, a wedge of lemon.
Begin with the eyes. Hold the food up and let the children say what they see. Then pass a piece around, first to the nose, then to the fingers. Ask them to hold a piece near the ear and bite it. Does it crunch, squeak, or make no sound at all?
Then taste slowly, and wait before anyone speaks. Ask where in the mouth they feel it and what their face did. Write the words the children offer on a chart that stays on the wall. Over the weeks, give them the six tastes the physician Charaka named, sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent, and let them decide which words fit which food.
Finally, carry one question into the shared meal. What is one taste in your box today? Let it stay a question, never a test.
Two rules hold every time. Each child may look, smell, touch, taste, or say “not yet”, and “not yet” is a full answer. And no child is praised or rewarded for eating.
Before the first tasting, ask every family about food allergies and keep that list with you. Cut food very small for young children, since round, hard pieces can choke them, and have everyone wash their hands first. If you try tasting with eyes closed, always allow eyes open.
What to watch for
When it works, bodies lean in. Children sniff before they bite. Faces move honestly, a wince, a smile, a pause. New words start turning up at lunch without your asking. The boy who refused last week now lifts the piece to his nose.
When it isn’t working, children perform. They say “yummy” to please you, or one child’s loud disgust sweeps through the group. Slow down and lower the stakes. Ask about colour and sound instead of liking.
If a child refuses, let them be the one who describes how the food looks, and try again next week. Talk to the parents if a child accepts very few foods at all, gags or becomes distressed at many textures, or seems to be losing weight. A doctor or feeding specialist may need to see the child.
Why it works
Wardle and colleagues offered London schoolchildren a taste of sweet red pepper every day for eight days. Their liking and eating rose compared with children who had no tastings. A third group got a sticker for eating and did not differ significantly from either group. Familiarity did the work, not the prize. Paul Dazeley and Carmel Houston-Price worked with children under three. After four weeks of looking at, listening to, feeling and smelling unusual fruits and vegetables, without tasting, the children touched and tasted more of those vegetables at mealtime, though not the fruits. The other senses opened the way to the tongue.
In France, Reverdy and colleagues gave children of eight to ten twelve taste lessons. Right afterwards the children were less afraid of new foods, what researchers call food neophobia, and more willing to try them, but ten months later the effect had gone. Tasting is not an event. It is practice, and it fades when it stops.
Behind all of this sits an old Indian idea, that the senses are ways of knowing and not just doors for information. Charaka’s word for taste is rasa, and Indian aesthetics uses the same word for the feeling a sensitive spectator relishes in a performance. We kept the word. Why did we forget what it asked of us? A child who learns to taste with attention is learning from experience, and learning that even hunger is something felt in the body and given a name.
Why this works: R20 Jñānendriya and karmendriya: the knowing senses and the acting senses, R17 Rasa: feeling as a way of knowing, R19 Anubhava: experience as a source of knowledge, R9 Interoception: how hunger, fear and calm shape readiness to learn
Next in Eating and caring: P49 Caring for a living thing
Notes
- Wardle, J., Herrera, M.-L., Cooke, L., et al. (2003). Modifying children’s food preferences: the effects of exposure and reward on acceptance of an unfamiliar vegetable. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 57, 341–348. https://www.nature.com/articles/1601541
- Dazeley, P., & Houston-Price, C. (2015). Exposure to foods’ non-taste sensory properties. A nursery intervention to increase children’s willingness to try fruit and vegetables. Appetite, 84, 1–6. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25218879/
- Reverdy, C., Chesnel, F., Schlich, P., Köster, E. P., & Lange, C. (2008). Effect of sensory education on willingness to taste novel food in children. Appetite, 51(1), 156–165. https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/effect-of-sensory-education-on-willingness-to-taste-novel-food-in
- Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 26 (Atreyabhadrakapyiya Adhyaya), on the six rasas. Charak Samhita Online, “Rasa”. https://www.carakasamhitaonline.com/index.php/Rasa
- Natyashastra, Chapter VI, on rasa as the relished essence of a performance. Teaching notes, CSJM University. https://gyansanchay.csjmu.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Natya-Shastra_Ch.-VI_Rasa-1.pdf