How Do Children Taste? Young People and the Production and Consumption of Food

Abstract

I’ve always been fond of Jonathon Swift’s tone in his A Modest Proposal. The literalness with which he addresses the heated debates of his time — and they were large ones about the trade in human bodies and souls — zings down through the centuries. What to do with a burgeoning poor Catholic population — well, eat them. For us now in the midst of yet another heated battle about the young, this time over children’s burgeoning bodies, that he attributes the flavoursome basis of his modest proposal to an American makes the irony all the more delicious. For, of course, many would blame the putative global epidemic of youth obesity on American media and food cultures. It bears emphasising that Swift’s satire was first and foremost directed at the simplistic ‘solutions’ paraded by experts to the economic and social problems that faced Ireland and elsewhere at the time (Wittkowsky 1943). We might say that this trend continues in the various ‘solutions’ now being proposed about youth obesity, such as the banning of junk food ads. Food porn, food blame, food guilt, food catastrophe.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.

Jonathan Swift 1729