What is taste awareness?
Taste awareness; It can be defined as the person's ability to notice the taste of the food he or she puts in his mouth, to remember this or similar tastes from his previous experiences, and to distinguish between mixed tastes.
How does taste awareness develop?
Taste awareness is a skill that begins to be acquired from early childhood and is used throughout life. In order for taste awareness to develop, the child must see the food item, touch it if possible, feel its taste and smell, and combine and record this information in his memory.
What should be done to support taste awareness in children?
Children learn best when they are happy and having fun. In this respect, it is important to make the feeding environment fun for the child.
Reducing distractions in the environment makes it easier for the child to focus on nutrition and taste. Care should be taken to ensure that the feeding environment is simple and noiseless.
It is important for the child to touch food items and feel their taste and smell for the development of taste awareness. Involving the child in every stage, from purchasing fruits and vegetables to washing, peeling and chopping, from preparing the meal to serving, facilitates the development of taste awareness.
Taste awareness is a skill that is acquired over time and can be improved through repeated experiences. Having taste-themed conversations during nutrition and naming the tastes of foods (such as sour lemon, hot pepper, delicious soup, less salt, more spice) also contribute to the development of taste awareness.
There were many taste receptors on the tongue. Chewing food thoroughly and keeping it in the mouth sufficiently provides more taste stimulation. This facilitates the development of taste awareness. Therefore, it is important to teach children the ability to eat slowly and keep food in the mouth adequately at an early age.
What are the factors that negatively affect the development of taste awareness in children?
The main factors that negatively affect the development of taste awareness in children; child's interests, wishes and interests Feeding is done by ignoring the child's needs, fast feeding, mixing many food items to a level that makes it difficult to distinguish their tastes, and feeding in front of a screen.
It is difficult to develop taste awareness in feeding styles where the child's wishes, needs and pleasures are not taken into account and all control is with the parent.
Fast eating reduces the amount of taste stimulation sent to the brain and the pleasure derived from feeding in both children and adults. This makes it difficult to develop taste awareness.
Children who eat in front of a screen often put food into their mouths without seeing it. Because of focusing on the screen, they cannot feel the taste and smell of the food sufficiently. This is an important factor that negatively affects the development of taste awareness. Eating in front of a screen also causes many health problems in children, such as screen addiction, speech disorders, fast eating and obesity due to overnutrition.
What are the negative effects of insufficient development of taste awareness?
Taste awareness is very important for a healthy and quality nutrition. Lack of taste awareness in the early period negatively affects the quality of your nutrition and increases the possibility of developing eating disorders in later ages.
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