With the exception of the Japanese pufferfish and some of my more disastrous moments in the kitchen (It still pains me to think about the time I nearly poisoned my dinner guests with the charred remnants of that ill-fated vegetarian chilli...), food is unlikely to kill you. (At least not instantaneously.)
But this doesn't necessarily stop certain individuals being scared of it.
Take preschoolers, for instance. Unfortunately for caregivers the world over, children between the ages of 2 and 6 years old are genetically programmed to develop something called 'food neophobia', i.e the fear of new foods.
Once in the grip of this phenomenon, your darling boy or girl—previously happy to try his or her hand at consuming any suitably sized, inedible object in sight—is likely to stage vigorous protests if you even so much as try to sneak a shard of unrecognized vegetable past his or her firmly clenched lips.
Other fears develop later in life—some of them rational, and some not so rational.
Perhaps taste aversions—the avoidance of specific tastes that become associated with negative consequences—are the most obvious, as well as the most adaptive.
For example, though I didn't actually let anyone eat substantial amounts of it, I wouldn't blame anyone who caught a whiff of the ‘extra-smoky' soy mince I mentioned earlier for giving the vegetarian shepherd's pie a miss on her next visit to Wholefoods.
Fears in response to food-borne pathogens also have their place, to some degree.
(Although anyone who is still avoiding greek salad and gazpacho after the admittedly worrisome Spanish cucumber scare of May 2011 can probably relax at this point.)
But other food-related fears are less helpful.
Ever heard the term 'orthorexia'? It's not a recognized eating disorder but some clinicians are beginning to use it to describe a fixation with eating healthy foods—and concomitantly a pathological fear of eating unhealthy ones.
Fear of food (following from the fear of becoming fat) is also central in anorexia nervosa, a serious mental illness that still claims more lives than any other psychiatric disorder around.
And while 'frightened' may be too strong a word to express the feeling that aspiring dieters will get when confronted with overflowing Halloween candy bowls tonight—'nervous' is probably a fair approximation.
So what can be done to reduce the fear factor for each of these groups?
The consensus seems to be that, whether one's terror is small or large, it's worth trying two good old-fashioned tools favored by behavioral therapists past and present: exposure (i.e. repeated presentation of the feared stimulus) and response prevention (i.e. breaking the behavioral pattern by not allowing the subject to demonstrate their typical avoidance response).
Exposure certainly works a treat in veggie-shy preschoolers—2 to 6 year olds who repeatedly consume tiny pieces of red pepper over a period of 14 days like it significantly better afterwards than before.
Food aversions can be resistant to extinction—but even I could be persuaded to happily indulge in a bowl of fake chilli now that 10 years have passed without soy-related incident.
And recent studies suggest that a promising way to treat anorexia may be to expose the individual to foods in a ‘real life' setting, work at reducing anxiety levels, and help him or her through the difficult experience of confronting and consuming the food.
What about the milder levels of candy-induced trepidation we talked about, though? The type that afflicts Halloween-costumed persons who are hoping to squeeze into last year's seemingly-shrinking party dress later this holiday season...but also dying to sink their teeth into the head of one of those cute-looking ghost-shaped cookies?
Well what's Halloween without scaring yourself a little?
I suggest you feel the fear...then take a bite anyway. Just remember to spend relatively more of your partying time bobbing for (non-candied) apples.
