I have recently realized that whenever the kids don’t want to eat something they say, “It’s too spicy.” They don’t yet have the vocabulary to describe what about the flavor they don’t like, other than spicy. While I much prefer, “It’s too spicy.” to last year’s version of verbalizing dislike, “It’s yucky!” with the food thrown on the floor (they were 1 and 2 then), I think we’ll work on new descriptors this week. It comes at a good time because Briana just finished her last week at Young Chef’s Academy’s toddler cooking camp and she’s very excited about cooking.
I start by telling the kids that they have 5 senses. The senses are ways that we can learn about the world around us. I point to my eyes and say, “We have eyes to see.” I point to my ears and say, “We have ears to hear.” I point to my nose and say, “We have noses to smell”. I point to my fingers and say, “We have fingers to feel and touch”. I ask the kids what they think the 5th sense is. Abby says, “We have knees for jumping.” Simultaneously Briana says, “We have mouths to talk.” I tell them that the Bree was the closest. What else do we have mouths to do? “Scream?”, Bree tries. No, the 5th sense is to taste. How did Abby, who still puts new objects in her mouth to check them out quite often, not get that? Then I tell them that we’re going to talk about different tastes today.
I take us to the princess room, formally a sitting room that became so over run with princess focused toys that we removed the real furniture and let the kids take the room over. Ah the things we say we’d never do before we have kids. I distinctly remember creating the basement playroom while pregnant with Briana and happily saying that all of the kids’ toys must stay in the toy boxes in their rooms or in this playroom. But I digress… We go into the princess room and I tell everyone to stick their tongues out and look at them in the mirror.
Do you see all of those little bumps on your tongues? Those are called taste buds, or papillae, and they help you to discover the flavors of the food that you are eating. When you were a baby, you had taste buds not only on your tongues, but also on the sides of your mouth and the roof of your mouth. That’s why babies are more sensitive to flavors. (After discovering this, I totally want to check a baby’s mouth, but I don’t think that would go over so well with my friends with newborns.) As you grow up your taste buds disappear everywhere but your tongue and get less and less sensitive and that’s why sometimes when you don’t like something as a kid you do like it as you grow up.
THE 4 FLAVORS
You can taste 4 flavors. Who can think of a flavor of food? “Spicy”, says Bree, unsurprisingly. Abby says, “sticky”. The 4 flavors that we can taste are - sweet, sour, salty, and bitter – each on a different part of your tongue. I know that there is now “umami”, which is the savory and mouthwatering sense, but I’m not bought in on that one, primarily because “umami” defies the idea of the tongue map because there are no taste bud regions specifically sensitive to “umami”, so I don’t teach it to the kids. If I find that “umami” becomes more widely recognized, I can always add it later.
I planned to show the kids this picture and explain it to them:
But I forgot to print it out so instead I just draw it out on a piece of paper.
I further explain that bitter is the taste of tonic water. I mix some tonic water and regular water in a small cup…ok a plastic shot glass but it was the best combination of size, disposability, and sturdiness available. I give the kids each a small, flat spoon that came in their yogurts. A popsicle stick would have worked well too. I tell them to dip the spoon into the tonic water and rub it on the back of their tongues and they will taste the bitterness. We all do it. Then we rub the water onto the other parts of the tongue and talk about how the taste changes slightly based on where on your tongue it hits. Bree then decides to drink a big swig of hers. She does not like bitter. Abby, on the other hand, drinks hers up too and excitedly announces that she drank some soda (because the water was fizzy). She doesn’t seem to mind it.
Then we move on to salty. Alternating what I expect the kids not to like (bitter and sour) with what they will like (salty and sweet). Between each tasting we eat a plain oyster cracker and take a drink of water to keep the tastes from mingling together. I put a good bit of salt into some water and I explain that when you taste the flavor of salt in foods, you call the food salty. We rub the salty water on the tips of our tongues. I seem to be the only one who thinks that the salty water isn’t half bad.
Next up – sour. We consult our picture and I point out that we have more sour receptors than other flavor receptors on our tongues. Sour things make you pucker up your mouths. I mix lemon juice and water and we rub it in our mouths. I tell the kids that the reason that we add sugar to lemonade when we make it is so that it doesn’t taste so sour like the lemon juice would by itself. Bree loves the sour, and in my opinion inedible, mixture. Abby’s palate is more like mine, and she pours the sour slurry out on the table.
Finally comes the flavor everyone will like – sweet. I make sugar water and we rub it on the different sections of our tongue. Bree wants to add “some of that sour juice” to hers so I add lemon juice to our cups when we finish talking about sweetness and we have mini lemonades.
THE FOODS
Then we talk about which flavor is everyone’s favorite. I tell the kids that Mommy loves salty foods like fries, chips, sunflower seeds, and cooking with sea salt. I add “everything in moderation” and tell the kids that you have to eat balanced meals and not too much salt, even though it’s delicious. Briana likes sour best. Abby thinks, “chicken nuggets are better”. So I ask her what flavor she thinks nuggets are. They both think about it and then guess “sweet”. I tell them that nuggets are a combination of flavors and that when you cook you want to balance the flavors. I add that I think nuggets are primarily salty and then balanced with the sweet barbecue sauce.
We talk for a bit about other foods we like and what category they’d go into. Carrots, which we eat now, and most fruits, and candy are sweet. Lemons, limes, grapefruit, and sour patch kids (which they’ve never actually had) are sour. We drink another “shot” of homemade lemonade. Raw broccoli and tonic water are bitter. Abby, upon tasting it, says that the raw broccoli is “too spicy” – now I know that means bitter to her. Chips, goldfish, nuts (well, the salted ones we eat) are salty. The kids get to try Pringles for the first time and they love them.
We plan out one food from each category to make for lunch. Briana suggests that we make carrot juice for the sweet. I’m thrilled and surprised since I figured they’d ask for candy or gummies. Though I have no idea how to make carrot juice, I put a bunch of carrots and water into the food processor until it liquefies and then I strain it and, ta-da (or “wa-ba” as Abby says), carrot juice. Bree adds a shake of salt and I add a tbsp of sugar for flavor enhancement. We chill it until lunchtime. It’s pretty good then and Bree actually drinks two full glasses happily.
In addition to carrot juice, Bree wants something lemony for the sour component so I suggest that we make a lemon garlic vinaigrette for a salad. She agrees and measures (after she goes to get her chef hat and apron) and mixes our ¼ cup olive oil, 3 tbsp lemon juice, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, and 1 ½ cloves of garlic – my own special, albeit simple, recipe – and we chill it in the refrigerator next to the carrot juice until lunchtime.
Raw broccoli is bitter so Briana washes the broccoli off for us and I chop it up to go into a salad. Since the kids had a babysitter last night, there’s leftover pepperoni pizza in the refrigerator so I tell them that pepperoni is salty and we’ll have that for our salty food. While we eat, about an hour later, we think of many words to describe the lunch.
While we waited until lunchtime, we check to see how sensitive we are to taste. We also go fight dragons in the princess room but that’s off topic. To see how sensitive to taste you are, you can check how many taste buds you have in a set area. Use a little food coloring (any color but red which will be hard to distinguish from your usual tongue color) on a paper towel and dab it onto your tongue. We used green. Do use the paper towel because it will drastically reduce the mess. I dropped a drop right on my tongue and while it rinsed our fairly easily my whole mouth was green. Whoops. That’s why I try on me first. I dabbed it on Bree’s mouth and only a small area turned green. Abby was skeptical and said, “No! No turn my mouth green.” And she ran off. We dye our tongues because your papillae or taste buds will not soak up the food coloring so they will still be pink and you can see them better. If you put a replacement ring from a hole punch or something made about that size somewhere on your tongue (It will be easier to count if you put it on the tip of your tongue.), you can use a magnifying glass count how many papillae you have in that small circle. If you have fewer than 15 you are considered a “non-taster” and probably have a big palate of foods that you like. 15-30 you are a “normal taster” and over 30 you are a “supertaster”, or very sensitive to food flavors. We didn’t go into that level of detail. We just looked at all those taste buds and Bree decides that she “must be very good at eating with all of those buds”.
Hmm…wonder if taste bud alteration could be the key to the next weight loss fad…
<3 Pedigreed Housewife
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