How to cater for children

This week, Caterer Middle East held its annual Food & Business Conference. The event took place at Grosvenor House Dubai, and featured panel discussions and presentations from industry experts.

During the event, Figjam development chef Karan Purohit discussed the challenge of catering for children.

During his presentation, Purohit suggested that a child’s eating habits can be understood better by looking at how its palate and eating habits develop.

A child, he suggested, can be compared to an omnivore, and how the diet of an omnivore develops. “As omnivores we have absolutely no inbuilt knowledge of which foods are safe for us to eat.

"Each of us has to use our senses to figure out for ourselves what is edible depending on what is available. A child is born with a clean palate, they are almost open to everything. However, as they grow, there are eating habits which they learn or reject.”

The first food experience in most cases for children, Purohit suggests, is mother’s milk. The composition of this, he added is fat, protein, lactose, minerals and water.

“Why do children always instinctively run to the sweet counter? This is because mother’s milk contains lactose, so the first primary taste for children is sweet,” Purohit said.

A child’s taste for salt develops between four to six months, he added. This, he explained is part of the reason why children do not like bitter tastes. Another reason for this is that children associate bitter flavour with medicines.