Why do children love sweet presents on New Year's Eve so much?

The sensory world of children is fundamentally different from that of adults: babies have about 30,000 taste buds in their mouths, and by the age of 18 only one third of them remain. And most of a young child's receptors are tuned to sweet and fatty foods, because mother's milk is full of sugars and fats. Therefore, the first ice cream in a waffle cup or chocolate candy in a New Year present becomes a source of the most powerful emotions and experiences that adults can not experience.

Children have a much greater craving for sweets than adults, and it doesn't diminish until late adolescence, explains Monell Chemical Senses Centre scientist Julie Mennella.

And children are more sensitive to bitter tastes because the body rejects them as potential poisons. So when we secretly tried beer and other alcoholic beverages, we could not understand how adults could drink such disgusting stuff. For the same reason, children can't stand greens, which have a bitter taste to them.

Remarkably, as we get older and our receptors die off, we "reconcile" with the taste of foods that we thought were inedible when we were children. According to a study initiated by British food company Butterkist, garlic and onions in dishes begin to be liked at age 20, and spinach, eggplant and bell peppers at age 21. Gherkins, beans, horseradish and mussels also made the list of "adult" foods.

There is a hypothesis that children are born with synesthesia - perception, in which any sensations are given additional qualities and become three-dimensional. That is, a little person can not only feel taste, but also "hear" its sound and "see" color. If this is true and we all had synesthesia as children, and then lost this magic over the years, it is not surprising that a sausage sandwich eaten in seventh grade is remembered for the rest of our lives.

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