> There is actually quite a bit of science on the instinctive versus learned
> behavior of children when it comes to eating.  Steven Pinker who is an
> evolutionary psychologist describes this research in How the Mind Works.
It
> has been a while since I read it but the pattern is something like this:
> Children of about one to two years old will eat almost anything.
> Psychologists have made edible artificial feces ( blue cheese for flavour,
> brown food colouring etc.)  The babies eat it happily.

science without a holistic understanding lead to perversion .
the researchers are looking for instinctive behavior in relationship with
what could not be accessible for most of the evolution by our ancestors ,
when this instinct established itself  ( meaning denatured foods ). that is
non sense.

what we discover by practicing eating by instinct of only undenatured foods
as they were presented to us in nature during our evolution , is that
instinct doen't work with foods in their denatured state ,the body, our
genetic, don't recognise them and so have no possibility to know if they are
edible or not . this  is not the case with foods that have been ingested for
millions of years , slowy over time the body establish an intimate
relationship with them that allow the new born to recoginse them and assess
them properlly .

what  they demonstrated by this experience is that childrens can't have
opinions judgements about an artificial created thing but present them to
real feces and see for yourself if there is not an instinctive recognition
of something not to ingest .
the experience have been done with infants at birth before taking breast
milk . diferents fruits have been presented to the nose of the baby and one
of them made the baby open its mouth everytime the food was passing under
the nose , while the others didn't trigger that reaction . they let the baby
eat it and after half of a small banana the baby didn't want it anymore
.then he open its mouth to another fruit .

  The they go through
> a stage for a few years where they are picky.  They find a few foods they
> like and they stick with them.  As adults we broaden our food choices but
> tend to follow the food taboos of our society.

it is sad for me to remind you that foods presented to babies and young
childrens have nothing to do with real food as nature is presenting them to
us . in front of this poor choice , instinctive regulation of eating as no
means to exerce and train its power,  so children learn to stick to whatever
has been a pleasing  experience and become fixated on few foods that can
guarantee their now addicted brain some rewards .
it is a big contast with the fluctuating curiosity , experience , of eating
by instinct natural foods .

we have seen this perverted expression of the instinct when the object of it
is not the natural one . the austrian scientist  konrad Lorenz made geeses
follow an human being ....
 his boss made a whole bunch of young germans walk like geeses using the
instinctive need for attachement young children have and perverting it by
directing it to the wrong object.

Mac Donald and other "perverted food" companies have been able to play with
this instinctive infant need to explore its environment .with the mouth that
have never been satisfy properlly .
 we got now a bunch of big babies running after their fix forever ....

jean-claude