The world is full of people fierce in the belief that they know the right diet to make your children glow with superior health. Few are shy about saying so. Fortunately, I’m here to help. I happen to know exactly what should go into your mouth, and into theirs, and, although you haven’t asked, I’m happy to tell you.
My confidence comes from the psychology department at Durham University, which has just published the results of a long-running experiment on getting children to eat their greens. Our broadsheets have summarised their findings with due reverence: ‘getting children to eat their vegetables starts in the womb’ (to quote the Guardian). ‘The secret to giving toddlers a taste for greens may start in pregnancy,’ agreed the Telegraph. To criticise such headline-worthy consensus would be ungenerous. Even so, allow me.
Let’s start with the study itself. Researchers set out to give 100 pregnant women capsules of powdered kale or carrot. Why carrot belonged in a study of bitter greens isn’t obvious. Covid restrictions, fumbled capsules and women deciding they had better things to do left only 32 from the intended 100. Their three-week-old babies were then shown cotton buds dipped in water, carrot or kale, and researchers rigorously measured their facial reactions in terms of ‘cry-face gestalts’ or ‘laughter-face gestalts’. I’m using technical language but you get the picture.
Some of the testing had to be carried out online. (I saw no mention of whether it was Teams or Zoom; sectarian differences matter.) Overall, however, the researchers were pleased with their work. Carrot-capsule babies were a little more likely to produce ‘laughter-face gestalts’ in response to carrot; kale-capsule babies did likewise for kale. When the babies were tested again aged three, researchers said the pattern persisted. By this time ‘cry-face gestalts’ had graduated in the literature to ‘negative facial expressions’. Science never rests.
In adults, of course, dietary science has reached a greater level of confidence. We know precisely what’s healthy and what isn’t. We know red wine is good for us, for example, except when it isn’t. We know carbohydrates are healthier than fat, except with the Atkins diet when it’s the other way round. Protein bars are ultra-processed poison, except for the ones I’m developing as part of my organic, biodynamic and gluten-free contribution to global health (and the protein supplements market, which happens to be projected to reach $70 billion by 2035).
In adults, of course, dietary science has reached a greater level of confidence. We know precisely what’s healthy and what isn’t
During pregnancy, breastfeeding and in childhood, however, the landscape is less certain. I know this because I once lived under a rival dietary priesthood. When we lived briefly in Italy after our son was born, my wife was startled by the certainties of local wisdom. Spirits were forbidden to her since she was breastfeeding but she was encouraged to drink as much red wine as possible. Broccoli and asparagus were removed from her food in case they made our magnificently fat baby reconsider his love of milk. Chilli, too, was banished. I don’t say this was directly responsible for his detention 15 years later when he took a bottle of Da Bomb Beyond Insanity Hot Sauce into school. He fed dabs of it on a toothpick to his friends, incapacitating several, while refusing to try it himself.
Italian wisdom was at least openly traditional, and didn’t come dressed up with a lab coat. I forget what it said about carrots. At his first-birthday dinner, our son threw his carrot sticks to the floor. That’s not because my wife had failed to take carrot pills in pregnancy. He liked carrot sticks – but he also liked throwing them on the floor.
‘Across all measurement points,’ the latest research found, ‘there is a general tendency for kale flavour to produce more cry-face gestalts.’ Whether or not the three-year-olds exposed in utero ever went on to eat kale, which you might think was the whole point, is unrecorded. So, for that matter, was what happened to 20 of the 32 original participants who had dropped out by the three-year point. Readers with a fondness for experimental methods might worry that the sermon grew in confidence as the sample size shrank. Even so, the BBC and the Times, along with their broadsheet colleagues, kept faith.
My wife noted the kale-exposed babies were significantly thinner, which might be relevant in a study of their willingness to eat. She pointed out that the study didn’t say how, or even whether, the babies had been randomly allocated. She enjoys an unfair advantage in reading methods sections, being an Oxford don who writes them. On the face of it, her criticisms sound fatal. But our children were picky eaters and she may be biased against kale.
‘Further work is needed,’ the authors conclude. I’m ahead of them. You’ll have to read my ground-breaking book on healthy childhood eating. That it reflects the lovage and ground elder my garden insists on growing, alongside the burgundy I bought with the advance, is sheer coincidence. My Oxford-academic-face gestalt is second nature. The Guardian, I trust, will be reverent.
