What Your Childhood Diet Teaches You About Food

The foods you loved as a child can teach you how to make healthy choices for your constitution. Adult food preferences are influenced by culture, media, and nutritional science. Sometimes, this influence reaches a point where you become confused about what to eat. Chances are, you had fewer filters and mental blocks around food as a child. Studies show over and over again that children naturally eat a nutritional balanced diet. Your body has an innate capacity to eat well, an important skill you can rediscover with Ayurveda.

Start by reconnecting with your childhood dietary preferences. What are some foods you loved as a child? What are some foods you didn't like? Were you forced to eat any foods against your will? Milk is a common example. Are there some foods you eat as an adult that you didn't like as a child? How have your tastes changed over time? Is it time to rewind the clock on some of your dietary habits?

As you consider how your tastes have changed over the years, you'll realize that taste is not in the food, but in your taste buds and sometimes even in your mind. Your taste buds are programmed to help you desire the right foods. Sometimes taste buds get distorted. As your biochemistry changes, so do the taste buds in your mouth.

Many people have an aversion to bitter taste because they don't include bitters often enough in their diet. When you don't eat enough of a taste, it becomes stronger. Your taste also changes during a meal. The first five bites of a meal taste fresh, clear, and stimulating. By the 10th spoonful, the flavor of whatever you are eating starts to wane and become dull.

Taste can get distorted by memory and even mental will. Very few adults enjoy their first sip of alcohol, or their first cigarette. For one reason or another, adults suppress their aversion to these foods.

If you struggle with food cravings, the good news is that you can reprogram your tongue in as little as 40 days. Within that time, by eating a diet rich in all 6 tastes (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter & astringent), you will minimize taste distortion on your tongue and rediscover some of your healthier, more authentic food cravings.