275 Quotes by Bee Wilson

There are three big things we would all benefit from learning to do: to follow structured mealtimes; to respond to our own internal cues for hunger and fullness rather than relying on external cues such as portion size; and to make ourselves open to trying a variety of foods.

Having a healthy relationship with food can act like a life jacket, protecting you from the worst excesses of obesogenic world we now inhabit. You see the greasy meatball sandwich and you no longer think it has much to say to you. This is not about being thin. It’s about reaching a state where food is something that nourishes and makes you happy rather than sickening or tormenting us. It’s about feeding ourselves as a good parent would: with love, with variety, but also with limits.

Taste is identity.

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.

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

When children are exposed through ‘sensory education’ to a wider range of flavours they start to love complexity and be bored by simplicity.

Memory is the single most powerful driving force in how we learn to eat; it shapes all our yearnings.

When we talk of memory of food, we generally assume that nostalgia is a phenomenon that occurs late in life - like Proust being transported to his youth by a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea. But food memory is there from the start. Even babies have nostalgia!

We are all born with echoes of our mother’s diet, which means that no one is a totally blank slate when it comes to flavour.