Different places are accompanied by different food cultures. Some people’s delicacies are simply unreasonable to others. For example, some people regard stinky tofu as a delicacy, while others avoid it. If a person who never eats stinky tofu falls in love with a person who is obsessed with stinky tofu, my mother will probably say: How will I live in the future if I can't eat it in a bowl? Why do humans have dietary preferences? Many scientists are interested in this. They discuss it from different perspectives such as cognition, nutrition and food science. The current common view is that if you don’t like a food, it’s because you haven’t tried it often enough.

It is better to give rewards to try than to just try

Scientists in the field of cognitive science say that animals have two reactions to unfamiliar foods: curiosity and fear. Curiosity prompts them to try, fear prompts them to refuse. Two contradictory attitudes lead to their reactions to unfamiliar foods: If they try it again and again without adverse consequences, and if it is wonderful, they will like it. A rat experiment published in 1975 went even further, finding that rats that had tried many different flavors of food accepted new flavors more easily.

Of course we are humans, and humans have much higher IQs than mice. However, children's behavior still retains many characteristics of animals, so when scientists want to test their theories, they always like to use children instead of adults for experiments. Although dietary preferences vary across the world, children all over the world like high-sugar, high-fat, deep-fried "junk food" and hate "healthy" vegetables, so letting children eat vegetables has become a favorite experiment of this kind. matter.

In 2003, scientists published a randomized controlled experiment: In a primary school, children aged 5 to 7 were randomly divided into three groups and allowed to eat raw bell peppers. The first time, have each child express how much they like bell peppers and record how much they eat. In the next 8 days, the children in the first group ate a little bell pepper every day and were given a sticker as a reward; the second group only ate bell peppers and received nothing; the third group did nothing as a control. . After 8 days, repeat the test done on the first day. The result is that the children in the second group are much higher than the third group in terms of liking and eating amount, while the first group is somewhere in between. It seems that simply trying, rather than trying for a reward, is more helpful in changing the "hatred" of vegetables.

Picky eaters are due to not trying enough

In fact, not only children, but also adults will like foods they originally disliked due to repeated attempts. Considering that most children eat at home, in order to make the results of this experiment more realistic, scientists also conducted another experiment. They found 150 children aged 2 to 6 years old. During the first home visit, each child was given six kinds of vegetables and asked them to rank them according to their liking. Then they picked the one they disliked moderately as the experimental target. The 150 children were then divided into three groups. The parents of the children in the first group gave them a taste of this vegetable every day, the children in the second group received advice on healthy eating every day, and the children in the third group did nothing. The first test was repeated two weeks later. As a result, the children in the first group showed a significant increase in their liking and consumption of the target vegetables, while there was no difference between the other two groups. It seems that children do not respond to ideological work, and it is more effective to eat it directly.

The process of this experiment is completely feasible for parents, and the results satisfy them. So many parents who underwent the experiment said they would continue to do the same thing in the future. For those children who are picky eaters, scientists believe that in many cases, parents give up because they think their children don't like it without trying enough times. So, how many times does it take to change your “prejudice” about a certain food? Scientists believe that our "fear" of unfamiliar foods is weak in infancy, strengthens by the age of two, and then gradually diminishes. Correspondingly, infancy is the easiest time to accept unfamiliar foods, and some studies have shown that even after trying it once, babies can greatly increase their acceptance. Like rats, it becomes easier to accept another after trying one vegetable. But older children and adults are not good at it. They have tried many times to accept a new food, but they still won't accept it easily when they encounter another new food. Moreover, as age increases, the number of trials required to accept unfamiliar foods increases significantly.

Research reports that it takes 5 to 10 attempts to get a two-year-old to like an unfamiliar fruit or cheese, while it takes 8 to 15 tries to get a three- to four-year-old to like tofu. . How many times does an adult need? It may also have something to do with the specific taste. For example, a sweet thing may not be used many times, but a bitter thing will take more trouble.

So, if a person who doesn't eat stinky tofu falls in love with someone who is obsessed with stinky tofu, don't delay your marriage because you are worried about "not being able to eat it in a bowl". With each other, try, try, try again, and over time you will fall in love with it. Even if the love has faded due to other reasons, for stinky tofu, it is still "tofu lasts forever, and love never changes."