4 ms·

> The food system is different from homecooked meals This is a good point, and everything I've heard from parents says that it's parents, not children, who ide

by dkarl 2y ago

> The food system is different from homecooked meals This is a good point, and everything I've heard from parents says that it's parents, not children, who identify home-cooked meals with care. Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. In order to feel cared for, all children need is to trust that the person caring for them will make sure they get enough food when they need it. Food quality has nutritional consequences down the line, and at some point a child that is fed pancakes every day will gain the ability to look back and regret how they were raised, but it doesn't prevent a child from feeling cared for in the moment.

tripper_27 2y ago
> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Let me fix that for you: Children notoriously prefer heavily marketed food in attractive packaging which is designed/optimized for addictiveness and immediate gratification.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  Eh, if you dumped a container of sugar into a home cooked meal they'd like it more than packaged food.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    There is a famous saying: A professional chef is just some one who is willing to use more butter than a home cook.
tripper_27 2y ago
if you'll forgive my prior snark, some people successfully involve the children in the cooking. When this is done, the children seem to prefer the home-cooked because they are part of the cooking and they are part of the feeding/providing to others. Don't underestimate the human desire to provide value to the tribe, it runs deep in the evolutionary make-up.
- theamk 2y ago
  Pretty sure no amount of participation in cooking can make children start liking food with specific tastes, like eggplants or celery. If they like it - great! I they don't like it, but parents do - well, _that_ kind of home-cooked food will never be liked. (Unless you process them so much, and add so many spices, that they no longer have any original taste.. but by that point they are at "pre-packaged" level of cooking)
- vanderZwan 2y ago
  Speaking as someone who successfully involves their toddler in the kitchen: regardless of her great joy in being alllowed to participate and contribute (which you are completely right about), my daughter would still much rather prepare spaghetti for dinner than veggies. Also, in some kind of weird benign parentification[0] twist, she now loves to feed me food, even if (or more like especially if) she doesn't like it. So having fun with cooking food seems quite decoupled from her desire to eat it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parentification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parentification - and I say it's benign because cooking together is completely optional for her
KittenInABox 2y ago
Children notoriously prefer consistent meals over diverse ones, home cooked or not. The issue with serving blueberries for example is that each blueberry is different. My mother home-cooked for me a boiled egg and rice porridge every morning, and it was that consistency that associated me with care.
- nicknow 2y ago
  Yes. And child psychologists will tell you that babies and children crave consistency, variety is not their thing. In fact, one of the reasons we as parents (adults) expose them to variety is so they develop an understanding of how to cope with inconsistencies. And it's always a careful balance, small amount of variety but mostly consistency. And I can tell you most little kids love hard boiled eggs which I suspect is because they are incredibly consistent in texture and taste, unspoiled by some cook seasoning them or cooking them differently.
jimbokun 2y ago
> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. In most cases, this is probably due to the care givers training their children to prefer that kind of food because they don't make many home cooked meals. I don't even know if it's true, though. When I was a kid, the best food in the world were the home made meals my grandmother made, especially on the holidays. Remember as a teenager telling my Grandma her meals were better than any restaurant I had ever eaten at, and meaning it in all sincerity.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Could you please stop posting flamewar- and ideological-battle-style comments to HN? Your account has been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's not what HN is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - AStonesThrow 2y ago
      [flagged]
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Dunno. My wife was reeeeally tryhard with our first child feeding him only home made food from the age of 1 to 2. He though industrial food was awesome as soon as he was exposed to it. (Obviously bad sample size) I think it is something about the perfect homogeneous product they like. Or how the taste even out between different ingredients on the shelf.
  - KetoManx64 2y ago
    Something to keep in mind is that industrial food usually has a lot of sugar and other additivies added to make it taste as good as possible. . Companies literally spend billions of dollars figuring this stuff out, of course the home made meal can't compete.
Aeolun 2y ago
> at some point a child that is fed pancakes every day will gain the ability to look back and regret how they were raised I regret nothing. Pancakes are and will always be great.
com2kid 2y ago
> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Nearly all people do, food scientists are really damn good at their job. It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain and causes people to want more. No one eats an entire bag of doritos because they taste better than a good steak.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain... What exactly do you think "tastes better" means? If it's triggering more of the pleasure centers of the brain, then it tastes better.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    This is trivial to prove false. During fine dining, a meal may consist of small portions that even when added up together total less calories than a large bag of theater popcorn which many people are quite capable of going through. No one will argue that the popcorn taste "better". Simply put the popcorn is less satiating but more addictive to eat. Meanwhile the fine dining meal, if done well, will be incredibly satiating and not leave one wanting for more. Hyper-palitability is a thing. There are foods that are hard to stop eating (e.g. potato chips), and that do not fill people up no matter the caloric content. Starbucks frappes are another example. They can easily have over 1000 calories, barely be satiating, and yet people desire them again and again. I hope no one claims frappes or potato chips are the best tasting foods in the world. But they are both addictive as hell to consume.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  That’s something I hate about other people. They just type out comments. I prefer to trigger the control centers of my brain to cause movement of my peripheral actuators to depress buttons on a purpose built device to compose textual information for transfer across the Internet.

by dkarl 2y ago

tripper_27 2y ago

> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Let me fix that for you: Children notoriously prefer heavily marketed food in attractive packaging which is designed/optimized for addictiveness and immediate gratification.

lesuorac 2y ago
Eh, if you dumped a container of sugar into a home cooked meal they'd like it more than packaged food.
- com2kid 2y ago
  There is a famous saying: A professional chef is just some one who is willing to use more butter than a home cook.

tripper_27 2y ago

if you'll forgive my prior snark, some people successfully involve the children in the cooking. When this is done, the children seem to prefer the home-cooked because they are part of the cooking and they are part of the feeding/providing to others. Don't underestimate the human desire to provide value to the tribe, it runs deep in the evolutionary make-up.

theamk 2y ago
Pretty sure no amount of participation in cooking can make children start liking food with specific tastes, like eggplants or celery. If they like it - great! I they don't like it, but parents do - well, _that_ kind of home-cooked food will never be liked. (Unless you process them so much, and add so many spices, that they no longer have any original taste.. but by that point they are at "pre-packaged" level of cooking)
vanderZwan 2y ago
Speaking as someone who successfully involves their toddler in the kitchen: regardless of her great joy in being alllowed to participate and contribute (which you are completely right about), my daughter would still much rather prepare spaghetti for dinner than veggies. Also, in some kind of weird benign parentification[0] twist, she now loves to feed me food, even if (or more like especially if) she doesn't like it. So having fun with cooking food seems quite decoupled from her desire to eat it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parentification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parentification - and I say it's benign because cooking together is completely optional for her

KittenInABox 2y ago

Children notoriously prefer consistent meals over diverse ones, home cooked or not. The issue with serving blueberries for example is that each blueberry is different. My mother home-cooked for me a boiled egg and rice porridge every morning, and it was that consistency that associated me with care.

nicknow 2y ago
Yes. And child psychologists will tell you that babies and children crave consistency, variety is not their thing. In fact, one of the reasons we as parents (adults) expose them to variety is so they develop an understanding of how to cope with inconsistencies. And it's always a careful balance, small amount of variety but mostly consistency. And I can tell you most little kids love hard boiled eggs which I suspect is because they are incredibly consistent in texture and taste, unspoiled by some cook seasoning them or cooking them differently.

jimbokun 2y ago

> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. In most cases, this is probably due to the care givers training their children to prefer that kind of food because they don't make many home cooked meals. I don't even know if it's true, though. When I was a kid, the best food in the world were the home made meals my grandmother made, especially on the holidays. Remember as a teenager telling my Grandma her meals were better than any restaurant I had ever eaten at, and meaning it in all sincerity.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Could you please stop posting flamewar- and ideological-battle-style comments to HN? Your account has been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's not what HN is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    [flagged]
rightbyte 2y ago
Dunno. My wife was reeeeally tryhard with our first child feeding him only home made food from the age of 1 to 2. He though industrial food was awesome as soon as he was exposed to it. (Obviously bad sample size) I think it is something about the perfect homogeneous product they like. Or how the taste even out between different ingredients on the shelf.
- KetoManx64 2y ago
  Something to keep in mind is that industrial food usually has a lot of sugar and other additivies added to make it taste as good as possible. . Companies literally spend billions of dollars figuring this stuff out, of course the home made meal can't compete.

Aeolun 2y ago

> at some point a child that is fed pancakes every day will gain the ability to look back and regret how they were raised I regret nothing. Pancakes are and will always be great.

com2kid 2y ago

> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Nearly all people do, food scientists are really damn good at their job. It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain and causes people to want more. No one eats an entire bag of doritos because they taste better than a good steak.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
> It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain... What exactly do you think "tastes better" means? If it's triggering more of the pleasure centers of the brain, then it tastes better.
- com2kid 2y ago
  This is trivial to prove false. During fine dining, a meal may consist of small portions that even when added up together total less calories than a large bag of theater popcorn which many people are quite capable of going through. No one will argue that the popcorn taste "better". Simply put the popcorn is less satiating but more addictive to eat. Meanwhile the fine dining meal, if done well, will be incredibly satiating and not leave one wanting for more. Hyper-palitability is a thing. There are foods that are hard to stop eating (e.g. potato chips), and that do not fill people up no matter the caloric content. Starbucks frappes are another example. They can easily have over 1000 calories, barely be satiating, and yet people desire them again and again. I hope no one claims frappes or potato chips are the best tasting foods in the world. But they are both addictive as hell to consume.
renewiltord 2y ago
That’s something I hate about other people. They just type out comments. I prefer to trigger the control centers of my brain to cause movement of my peripheral actuators to depress buttons on a purpose built device to compose textual information for transfer across the Internet.