Learning to drink coffee, how does that work?

I didn’t really like coffee much when I was younger either. That changed when I was about 14 and started working in the washing-up kitchen of a restaurant. I’d said I didn’t need any coffee, but unasked, by the end of the day there were always five full, cold cups of coffee sitting next to me on the worktop. A waste, of course, so at some point I gave it a go anyway. And, well, after that I kept going..

Most children will pull a face when they take a sip of coffee, as if they’ve bitten into a lemon. Yet a few years down the line, a lot of those same youngsters are happily drinking coffee, so how does that actually happen?

Children have more taste buds than adults, and those taste buds are also spread more widely across the mouth. So different flavours come across differently for children than they do for adults. Coffee without milk and sugar has quite a strong flavour on its own, which is why even many adults only drink it with, say, a splash of milk. On top of that, you naturally get used to the slightly bitter flavour of black coffee over time, and once you’re there, you’ll probably drink it for the rest of your life..

The Nutrition Centre advises against giving coffee to children under 13, and recommends that under-18s have a maximum of one cup of coffee a day because of the caffeine, although a glass of cola full of sugar and caffeine is probably worse.

And remember, with sugar you make the coffee less healthy and less tasty anyway!