Regular listeners to Gastropod will know that one of our favorite guests is none other than the fabulous bee Wilson.

She was on our very first episode all about cutlery, including the invention of the fork.

And she's been back a bunch of times. She's joined us to talk about honey and food fraud and all sorts of things.

And we wanted to replay one of our favorite episodes with bee because she has a brand new book out.

It's her first ever cookbook. It's called The Secret of Cooking recipes for an easier life in the kitchen.

And with chapter titles like Cut Yourselfs and Slack and there is always another way of doing something.

It's really speaking my language. It's just filled with lots of brilliant tips for making everything more delicious with less work and less stress.

And it's out right now. So check out her cookbook and enjoy this encore.

So I'm just sitting with Alice at her high chair. She's been having solid food about three weeks now, I think.

I'm just trying a bit of wheat fix and pear puree with her.

I don't really know why I chose pear. I think it's just because it sort of seemed quite innocuous and it's quite sweet so they generally like it.

Yeah, they do.

Welcome to Gastropod, the podcast where we look at food through the lens of science and history.

And I'm Nicola Twilly and that was my friend Claire and her baby Alice. Alice has just started learning how to eat.

And that brings us to the mystery we want to explore in today's episode.

How do we learn to eat?

How do we learn what is actually food?

Out of all the weird and wonderful things we can put in our mouths.

How do we learn what flavors we like?

How do parents manage to get kids to try all these strange new substances?

And is there any way that we as adults can change our likes and dislikes?

This episode is supported in part by the Burr's Welcome Fun for our coverage of biomedical research and by the Alfred P. Slown Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology and Economics.

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