'StarTalk': Science Behind Why Kids Don't Like Vegetables

Neil deGrasse Tyson sat down with guest Arielle Johnson to talk about the science of the taste buds in a July 18 episode of StarTalk. In the episode, Tyson and co-hosts — Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly — discussed a possible reason why children don’t like vegetables. 

While explaining the mechanisms of flavor, Johnson emphasized that not only does the olfactory system alter the way our tongue discerns taste, but also the way that the human body understands the flavor of things has evolved as a survival mechanism.

Tyson began in one segment, “I heard that children don’t like vegetables because vegetables on average are bitter.”

The 65-year-old astrophysicist and writer continued to explain why that taste profile matters. He said, “Most poisons in nature are bitter, and poisons are much more potent in a small body, such as an infant, child, or toddler than they are in an adult.”

Due to this, the younger population may have developed an aversion to vegetables as a safety mechanism.

“So that this is an evolutionary resistance to not dying by eating something poisonous.”

Johnson confirmed Tyson’s hypothesis. “That’s exactly how it works,” She agreed and expanded on the explanation Tyson gave.

“Babies and children have more tastebuds than adults. We’re born with a lot of tastebuds that we sort of gradually lose over our lifetimes. So you know everything we’re tasting is more intense than what an adult would taste.

After validating the feelings of children who don’t like vegetables, Johnson continued to explain that inversely most foods that are “bad for us taste better.” 

This is because of the rise of artificial flavorings altering the natural taste of produce.  

Many of the things discussed by Tyson, Nice, and O’Reilly in the StarTalk episode were examined in Arielle Johnson’s new book Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor.