How do parents in spicy food cultures introduce strong flavors to children?

Cafe Society
1

I apologize for the awkward way the question is phrased, I had to cram a lot of content into few words. Anyway…

I’m wondering how parents introduce children to spicy food in cultures where spicy cuisine is the norm. Like do parents in India or Thailand or whatever just put a teeeeeny bit of hot chiles in the little tot’s porridge one night , and just kind of build up from there? Are Indian preschoolers eating the same vindaloo that their parents are eating? Do Thai three year olds enjoy the spiciest (whatever is known for being extraordinarily spicy in Thai cuisine) that their parents and older siblings are eating?

2

My daughter’s halmonie was convinced that kimchi = life, and taught her in the high chair to dunk it in water. (It did make a turgid texture during teething too)

3

To some degree the acclimation happens even before birth: spice comes through in amniotic fluid which is swallowed. It also come through in breast milk. From there, yes, increasingly added to foods as table foods are introduced.

4

I was going to mention that.

I also suspect that DNA affects the way certain things taste, so that children born in cultures in which spicy food is ubiquitous enjoy the taste.

Personally, I hate spicy food. So did my mother, and she hated it even more than me-- she thought more than a teaspoon of cinnamon in a carrot cake was overdoing it.

I didn’t find out until I was in my 40s that there are flavors under the hot sensation in Indian foods when my husband gave me saag paneer mixed with a LOT of white rice and yogurt. I actually liked it.

DH likes spicy food, and so does the boychik.

I know that in that paper test, when paper strips are handed out to a group, and some people just taste paper, while others find them bitter, they taste just awful to me. Some people in the group said the paper tasted bitter, but not gawd-awful, so I guess there are degrees.

It’s probably true for capsaicin as well, and children who can’t taste it, or taste it well, or for whom it has some taste other than “I’m on fire” taste all the other flavors that for me are covered up by the burning sensation.

And for the record, for me, the sensation of capsaicin really is burning. It feels for certain that my mouth is being damaged by whatever this is. I experience a desperate need to put out the fire.

I also hate cilantro, although, for me, it doesn’t taste like soap-- it tastes more like something in the food was spoiled. And the odor of food with cilantro is a little like BO. My brother agrees with me on this, so there you are-- DNA. He doesn’t care for hot food either, although he likes a lot of less hot seasoning in his food-- that might not be DNA, though, but because for the last 20 years he has been eating his Korean MIL’s cooking.

5

I’m from Pakistan but of South Indian ancestry. As soon as children are eating solid food, they are eating spicy food.

My sister was married to a white New Englander and lives in an ex-urban/rural area that is not culturally diverse. She can and does eat really spicy food. Her ex-husband can’t eat even a mild chili, never mind anything remotely resembling hot Indian food.

Their first kid was raised “Yankee style” only very bland foods. 30 years later he can’t eat anything spicy. Will eat naan and yogurt in an Indian restaurant. My parents would buy frozen chicken nuggets and fish sticks when he came over.

They divorced soon after the second kid was born. He was given whatever my sister was eating. Sometimes spicy, sometimes not. 27 years later he’s munching on Mysore masala dosa and the spiciest dishes that Korean, Mexican and Ethiopian cuisine dishes out.

6

The first part of that statement is definitely true. There are genetic variants to taste receptors and olfactory responses as part of flavor as well. I’m skeptical however of any sub population differences in genetics as a major driver in cultural taste preferences over learning and neurodevelopmental impacts of early exposures during critical and sensitive periods, prenatal to early childhood. My WAG would be that third generation children of cultural groups that eat more spice fully acculturated into America have the same preferences that other Americans do.

7

While DNA and vicariously through breast milk has some ability to acclimate children, it’s primarily just through introduction of varying foods as the children grow up. I know plenty of children that are food-adventurers whose parents have them trying and eating a wide variety of foods from around the world. And I know plenty of adults that have never eaten anything beyond a hamburger, pizza or a chicken nugget and would have a gag reflex to a piece of broccoli, much less a piece of sashimi.

8

One of our really white engineers says that he started giving his kids jalapeños when they turned two. He had at least four kids and they never had trouble with spicy food.