Great item in the New Yorker in the piece about kids and eating new food. I quote:
By the age of four or five, almost all children become "neophobic": they develop an aversion to new foods, and to vegetables in particular.
How fascinating! Looks like the key to beating kids aversion to interesting foods is to cram their faces full while they are still very young. Myself, I really don't hate many foods, but water chestnuts are among them. But I know how to beat it! Shortly after the above quote, in the same paragraph:
... there's no real substitute for patience; the average five-year-old has to taste a new food between five and ten times ... before he'll accept it.
Nice! So all I have to do is gorge on water chestnuts for an entire week straight and they'll be my favorite food ever! Simple enough.
