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 didn't really like it. Yeah they do.

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

I'm Cynthia Graber 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?

And finally we're proud to announce that today's episode is also sponsored in part by the

Burr's Welcome Fund in support of science communication and our coverage of biomedical research.

So I used to avoid eating cheese any kind of cheese actually at all costs. I hated tomatoes as a kid.

As a kid I hated mushrooms of all types. I remember at one point writing an essay about how I

hated onions and I couldn't stand mushrooms which seems totally weird now because I

it's somewhere just stopped being a picky eater and those are totally normal foods now.

Peanut butter on their hand is and forever will be gross. Do you like trying new food?

Not really. Why not? Because it might be lemon that I really don't like.

Cornflake boy was someone that made my sister new when we were growing up and he was a boy,

a friend of ours, who ate nothing but cornflakes and milk. You may recognise that last voice.

It's B Wilson, one of the stars of our first ever episode. She's got a new book out called First

...