The Secret History of Food

You are what your parents ate.

Decades before modern science confirmed his beliefs, food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin discussed the relationship between obesity and refined carbohydrates, and promoted the advantages of a low-carb diet. In his 1825 book Physiologie du goût (Physiology of Taste), he warned against children drinking coffee, and suggested that food choices define you physically as well as “psychologically, socially, symbolically and spiritually.”

Contemporary research indicates that the foods your parents consumed may influence your tastes. For example, a mother who loses sodium because of chronic morning sickness can set off an increased desire for salt in the fetus, resulting in an overcompensation that persists throughout life.

Flavors from a mother’s diet that are present in breast milk and amniotic fluid also shape food preferences. Breastfed babies often enjoy a greater variety of foods than infants who consume formula, likely because the mother’s diet is more varied and flavorful. Humans who receive exposure to nutritionally poor diets in the womb have...