It is curious that we talk so little about the flavour of formula, given that it is the main food many babies taste for that crucial first year.

Almost every parent wants the best for their child, but they are frequently too hung up on the indignities of the past to see the real problems in front of them or to separate a child’s needs from their own urges.

The existence of birthday cake ice cream suggests that we can no longer distinguish celebration foods from everyday ones. We are also not too sure whether we are children or adults.

What you taste as a child is still there in your adult brain, even if you haven’t thought of it for years.

The childhood foods that we ache for are very specific to the place and the time where we grew up.

Childhood food memories, like family jokes, are often untranslatable to outsiders.

The importance of shared childhood food memories for bonding families together can be seen among expats who carry their ‘homeland’ with them in the form of ingredients smuggled in suitcases.

At a certain point as a child, we notice that the food at home is not the same as the dinners our friends eat.

Though it was composed of shortening, corn syrup, colourings and other unwholesome ingredients, with a shelf-life so long it became the punchline of many jokes, for many the Twinkie was the taste of childhood. It was Proust’s madeleine for the junk-food generation.