If you’re in a culture where the food palate is generally spicy, or if you’re a parent who just digs spicy food, what’s the Conventional Wisdom on introducing your child to spicy food? (Note that here “spicy” means "lots of ‘heat’, from capsaicin or ginger or whatever, not just ‘lots of spices’.) Like, do you put a bit of Anaheim Pepper in their breakfast burrito when they’re three and see how it pans out?
Also, apologies for the indelicacy and my complete failure to understand anatomy: is eating spicy foods (again, see my clarification on what I mean by “spicy”) verboten for breastfeeding women?
I had small bits of it as a toddler, but my parents and grandparents made sure to keep the more lethally hot stuff (in particular, the jar of skinny hot green peppers in vinegar, a staple condiment that was on the table any time turnip greens or rutabagas had been cooked) out of my inquisitie toddler reach. Got into some anyway and the burn made me cry and I rubbed my eyes and got some in my eyes, and there was a lot of shouting about whose fault it was that I’d managed to get my hands into that.
When I was 5 we moved to Los Alamos and between 5 and 7 I was given ample opportunity to nosh on as much jalapeño salsa and chips, huevos rancheros saturated in red chile pequins, and other chile and jalapeño based hottery as I felt like, and became addicted to the hott. My sister did too and she was two years younger than me.
My grandson, who is 19 months old, eats and loves spicy food already, and asks for Thai food off my daughter’s plate.
But he is advanced in other ways too.
our two had it as hot as they liked from the point of weaning (about 12 months in each case). Eldest daughter has settled on a medium comfort level with heat now (she is 12) son is 10 and he likes stuff hot! I’ve never seen him beaten by anything yet. When tackling a particularly brutal thai curry he had to sit with his head in his hands for a few minutes between bouts of eating but he still finished it all.
I don’t like spicy food, so didn’t eat it while breastfeeding, but DH likes it, so if there’s a gene for it, the boychik has it. At his first Passover, when he was 10 months old, he got into the horseradish, and ate some straight, with a big smile on his face.
He’s 11, and we can safely order him anything in an Indian, Thai, or Chinese restaurant without worrying if it’s on the spicy side.
Albeit Jewish, my family on my mother’s side comes from Slovakia. There’s a joke that a Slovak can pull a potato straight out of the ground, take a bite, and say “Too salty.” On my father’s side, we come from England. I like food with maybe a pinch, and I mean pinch of salt, possibly even less pepper, a little paprika, and if I’m feeling adventurous, cinnamon.
Seriously, I’ve learned to like slightly more spicy food in the last 10 years or so, but when something is really hot, all I can feel is “hot.” I can’t taste anything. I’m also one of those people who can taste that bitter flavor that’s on that paper they give you in science classes in high school.
IANA parent. Never will be. But I heard an interesting story on NPR a few/several years ago that said that researchers have said that what a woman eats while she is pregnant is likely to be something the will like once it is born.
My oldest daughter, when she was around 18 months to two years, just went for the spicy foods with gusto. I was so proud of her! Now, at 3 and a half, she won’t eat much beyond noodles, chicken nuggets, sausage, and bread.
My kids gradually became accustomed to hot foods over the years from 5 to 10. But my daughter and SIL ate lots of hot foods, mostly Indian and Thai when she was pregnant and their son started eating the same foods before he was one.
We did from the time we introduced real table food - they ate whatever we ate cut up small.
We didn’t add curry to their little jars of pureed sweet potatos, but if we were eating something spiced, they ate it. I remember the look of horror one of my vegetarian friends had when we were feeding our not yet walking son tiny bits of bratwurst (which aren’t overly spicy, but aren’t bland). We took them for Indian and Thai from a young age.
My daughter doesn’t like spice even with the early introduction. My son does.
I ate whatever I wanted when I was breastfeeding - there are things you should stay away from if your kid is cranky - which is usually ascribed to tummy troubles - and spicy foods does make that list - things that cause gas in mom might be causing gas in baby - And you aren’t supposed to drink alcohol. But if baby is doing fine there isn’t any reason to skip the sriracha.
My 20-month-old eats moderately spicy food. Has since about 1 year, when our doctor said he could pretty much eat whatever we were eating as long as it was reasonably healthy and not the size to choke on. Not, like tabasco and hot salsa, but mild salsa and curries. The first solid food dish that he devoured and came back for more was a moderately spicy lentil stew.
I occasionally give him tiny bits of spicier things than he’ll like if he won’t stop bugging me about them so he’ll believe me when I tell him “I don’t think you’ll like this.”
I didn’t get into spicy foods until my 20’s, and I’m pissed. Why no one introduced this to my in my youth disgusts me.
My experience with my Mexican ex-spouse is, you start introducing chile sauces pretty much from the beginning. “Baby food” isn’t a big thing, but refried beans are. Some spicy salsa mixed into the refried beans is a great introduction.
Not all babies adapt to picosa food. I know lots of Mexicans who avoid it like the plague.
SiL the One was horrified when her then-toddler son asked for and was given a try at his father’s chicken tikka masala, which isn’t even hot. She’s the Queen of Rules, though, and most of them boil down to “anything I don’t like shouldn’t be liked by anybody else”.
SiL the Two is very happy that her son will eat “pretty much anything”, that his reaction at seeing a new food is usually to ask to try it, and that he’s also very clear when he does not like or want something. I understand that his reaction upon being given a bite of guindilla (a type of pepper) was that he didn’t like it, but he didn’t make more of a fuss than about any other food he doesn’t happen to like. He was given the guindilla because he’d seen his uncle chug down one and asked for some; at the time he was 2yo and barely starting to speak a few words, but his “point and make appropriate faces” worked just fine.
Teaching kids to like spicy hot food is like teaching them how to argue with their sib…You don’t really have to, it comes naturally. All my kids like hot and spicy, not me. I have ulcers in my gut and the twain shall never meet, if I can help it.
My six year old daughter has been eating spicy for a few years now-- Frank’s Red Hot sauce, jalapeño potato chips, sriracha, raw white onion, horseradish. Always had to have a cup of milk next to her in case it gets to be too much, but she’s liked the spicy for at least three years now. Her eight year old brother likes things bland.
My son was a little over a year and we were eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant, he reached out and got a handful of salsa. We thought about preventing him from eating it, then we thought to just let him and see if he liked it. It wasn’t super spicy. Just basic restaurant salsa. He loved it. It’s been 18 years and he hasn’t stopped eating spicy things yet.
