New York Times Book Review "[An] exhaustively researched book. [T]he central premise of First Bite is one that we'd all be wise to see as liberating, generous and ultimately optimistic: If we learned what and how to eat as babies, we can unlearn and relearn and actually change what Wilson sees as our collectively chaotic relationships with food. First Bite is, first and foremost, an anthropological category killer on the topic of how we learn to eat." Wall Street Journal "[A] fascinating new book. First Bite should be read by every young parent, and is a good resource for adults with eating disorders and those with more prosaic problems like waistline drift. There are some very useful ideas within these pages, and none of the usual pseudoscientific bunk that plagues books about diet. Carefully crafted, astutely served, delicious and nourishing: First Bite is a real treat." Washington Post "[A] fascinating new book.

Wilson sprinkles just enough personal narrative through First Bite to establish her as a sympathetic figure without turning the book into a memoir. Her tone is refreshingly loose and friendly; she's one of the few food scholars I can think of who can effectively quote both Margaret Mead and Homer Simpson. Ultimately, her message is a hopeful, even liberating, one bolstered by examples large and small." Boston Globe "Wilson lays out her discoveries in a series of easily digestible chapters that balance science and anecdote with short interludes on various foods. She makes a case for health, but even more so, for pleasure, for enjoying what we eat. Her tone is down-to-earth and research-based at once, gentle, encouraging, no-nonsense. The book lacks the self-helpery pap that mars so many best-selling books about food, but offers up advice and well-supported information on how we can teach ourselves and our children to eat." Scientific American Mind " First Bite is a worthy read that provides sharp insights into how our tastes evolve.

Notably the book offers all of us Pringles fiends and Hostess hounds a chance at redemption with sage advice on how to quit junk-food addictions and change even the most ingrained eating habits." Huffington Post "Wilson taps uncannily into a number of food anxieties. [She] wrote First Bite: How We Learn To Eat as a study of taste preferences and food habits, but it is really an economics book. Economics is the study of scarcity and choice. Wilson''s ingenious turn is looking at our preferences -- the demand." Nature "[A] lucid survey. [Wilson] dishes up an impressive range of research in neuroscience and nutrition on topics from the evolution of the Japanese diet to babies' self-directed preferences for, say, turnips, as demonstrated in the fascinating, flawed work of twentieth-century US paediatrician Clara Davis." Bookforum "Clearly, [Wilson] has not only written a fascinating book about identity and how our tastes and food preferences are formed (and can be changed), she is also truly wise.

" Publishers Weekly "[A] smart and telling journey that outlines food habits and where they originate. Using brief tales, Wilson details many disorders across the consumption spectrum in an insightful and earnest tone that appeals to food-lovers and parents. Discussing everything from adults with stringent eating patterns to gendered weight misperceptions and changes in cultural norms, Wilson delineates how diets develop and, more importantly, how to make healthy modifications." The New Yorker, Page Turner blog "Wilson.often uses the topic of food as a gateway to explore the intersecting histories of ideas, culture, technology, and society. [Her] interest in First Bite lies in how the combined forces of culture, memory, and long-standing food preferences lead individuals to perpetuate the often unhealthy eating habits they've inherited." New Republic "Bee Wilson's new book First Bite takes on the subject of how we learn to eat as children and the habits we end up with as adults. The good news in the book is that some of our bad habits - even the bad habits we've passed on to our offspring - can in theory be undone.

First Bite collects an impressively wide range of success stories from this front. While First Bite does not introduce itself as a self-help guide, its pages contain a generous portion of no-pressure advice, doled out in a sensible but soothing manner." Shelf Awareness " First Bite is both a rich social history for those interested in the relationship people have with food and an encouraging word for harried parents hoping to expand their children''s culinary horizons." National Post , Canada "Wilson confronts a basic but perplexing question: how does each of us decide what we like to eat? Are we born with innate preferences? Or are our food habits shaped by family, culture, geography, even emotions--and to what degree?" Truthdig "That I scoured this book for feeding hints doesn't mean it is primarily an advice book. First Bite is more an exploration of overlapping topics - food, family, memory, marketing -with reminders, again and again, to pause and re-examine what we think we know. [Wilson] knows that people are weary of being lectured at, and that there is scant evidence to suggest that simply telling people to eat better does any good. But there are nuggets of wisdom deposited throughout the book that, taken together, point toward a new way of thinking about food." Kirkus Reviews "[A] well-informed.

guide to healthy eating and a well-balanced diet. With generous measures of grounded wisdom and solid research findings, the book should attract and possibly inspire broad groups of readers struggling with eating-related issues." Discover "Food writer Wilson probes the psychology of food memories, dips into the chemistry of flavor and digs deep into the physiological and social roots of obesity in this smorgasbord of insights." Popular Science "[Wilson] proves to be a clear-eyed and level-headed guide to the fraught and fretful landscape of contemporary dietary research. Wilson is a lucid and compelling writer, weaving nimbly between historical narrative, scientific research, and personal anecdote." Maclean''s , Canada "[M]eticulously researched. Wilson makes a strong argument that we can ''relearn the art of eating.' This process doesn't necessarily start with nutrition, but with taking pleasure in food.

" Raymond Sokolov, former author of the "Eating Out" column for the Wall Street Journal "Bee Wilson's First Bite is the delicious and nourishing result of her deep research into the problem of proper eating. This important book brings together a library of recent studies on obesity, anorexia, and other pathologies that shorten life and make millions of sugar addicts and serial dieters miserable. She steers deliberately clear of counterproductive hectoring ''advice,' while offering instead a broad, food-loving, and philosophical approach for the perplexed omnivore." Nigella Lawson "This is a fascinating, at times provocative, investigation into how and why we eat what we do, how food can be both medicine and poison, and a call-to-arms manifesto to make eating guiltlessly pleasurable for all." Dan Barber, Executive Chef and author of The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food "There's a line in First Bite that so gripped me that I finished the book in one sitting: ''Our difficulty is not just that we haven't learned to cook and grow food.it's that we haven't learned to eat.' In our Sisyphean attempts to improve our diets, we would do well to consider the origins of our likes and dislikes (Bee Wilson proves they start early), and how we can reset our gustatory prejudices (it's easier than we think). A wise, thoughtful, and inviting invitation to train our palates for the better.

" Yotam Ottolenghi, chef and food writer "Bee Wilson is the ultimate food scholar. First Bite is a brilliant study of how we form our food preferences and how we may be able to change them. Her narrative kept me hungry for more until the very end." Dan Jurafsky, author of The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu "Why do we grow to love certain foods? How do our families and our memories affect our tastes? What can we do to raise children to eat well and wisely? In First Bite , Bee Wilson blends science, history and memoir to offer deep lessons about our relationship with food. This is an important book that is also hugely enjoyable, full of fascinating stories told with warmth and wisdom. An invaluable tool for understanding and overcoming our fraught relationship with food, Bee Wilson''s First Bite will change how you eat and how you live." Heston Blumenthal, head chef, The Fat Duck "No matter what our age, we hunger for childhood food. First Bite weaves together fascinating scientific research to show why we wish we were.