First Bite: How We Learn to Eat. Bee Wilson

      

      

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thestate.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain in 2015 by 4th Estate

      This 4th Estate paperback edition 2016

      Copyright © Bee Wilson 2015

      Cover image © Mat Taylor

      The right of Bee Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      ‘An Evening in Terezin’ from I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942–1944 by Hana Volavkova, copyright © 1978, 1993 by Artia, Prague. Compilation © 1993 by Schocken Books. Used by permission of Schocken Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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      Source ISBN: 9780007549726

      Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780007549719

      Version: 2016-11-10

       Dedication

       For Emily

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER 1: Likes and Dislikes

BEETROOT

CHAPTER 2: Memory

       MILK

       CHAPTER 3: Children’s Food

       BIRTHDAY CAKE

       CHAPTER 4: Feeding

       LUNCHBOX

       CHAPTER 5: Brothers and Sisters

       CHOCOLATE

       CHAPTER 6: Hunger

       BREAKFAST CEREAL

       CHAPTER 7: Disorder

       CRISPS

       CHAPTER 8: Change

       CHILLI

       EPILOGUE: This is Not Advice

       Footnotes

       Notes

       Further Reading

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       Preface

      Some find the whole matter of eating easy, while others find it hard. I used to be on the wrong side of this great divide and somehow, to my own surprise and relief, leaped over to the other side. This book is my attempt to explore how this switch was possible.

      You don’t have to look far in our world to encounter people – of all sizes – who relate to food in chaotic ways. The chaos can take many forms: compulsive overeating, undereating, or extreme pickiness. Some people become so obsessed with the purity of what enters their mouths that they cannot accept invitations to eat with friends. It is a lonely occupation, being someone who wrestles to control their responses to food, given that modern life is steeped with things to eat, both real and imaginary. Snacks assail us at the checkout; dream feasts tease us from hoardings, newspapers and TV cooking shows.

      Without ever quite having a full-blown eating disorder – though I came close – I managed to make myself pretty miserable about eating for the best part of a decade, from the middle school years to young adulthood. I probably appeared fine: a bit overweight, nothing more. But