The great British rice pudding debates of 1912-13 pitted against each other two notions of how children did, and should, develop their eating habits. The controversies were largely about working-class kids – how to properly nourish them, how to make them better representatives of an “imperial race”, and how to overcome the “stupid feeding” that produced so many sallow, stunted and disease-ridden children, destined to be unfit for military service or productive work. Rice pudding, and its relatives made from sago, tapioca and semolina, were at the heart of the matter, because experts had thought for some time that these milky concoctions were cost-effective ways of getting good stuff into the kids. The problem was that many children – of all classes – detested rice pudding. When, years later, Mary Jane was “crying with all her might and main”, and AA Milne asked what was the matter with her, the answer was, of course, “it’s lovely rice pudding for dinner again!”.

One side of the rice pudding controversies maintained that children’s tastes were corrupt: youngsters liked bad things – bread and jam, sweets, tea and sugar – and they needed vigorous expert intervention to get them to eat properly. Perhaps they would come to like foods that were good for them, but, really, who cared whether they enjoyed them or not? As a rule, children didn’t like foods that were genuinely nourishing. Hence, longstanding parental battles to get the kids to “eat your veggies first”, or “eat a little broccoli and you can have a sweet later”.

The other side to the rice pudding debates didn’t abandon the notion that kids could and should acquire new, and better, tastes, but insisted that there was no point in torturing them. A little light encouragement might be in order, and a theatrical display of adults relishing their broccoli – “Yum! Yum!” – might help, but deep thought should be given to what children actually liked and how their tastes developed.

Bee Wilson’s concise account of these Edwardian arguments is just one historical vignette in her delightful First Bite. The overarching question is how we acquire our tastes and what, if anything, might be done to change them – both for our kids and for ourselves. That is a refreshingly different way of structuring a discussion of how we eat now and how we should eat better. The usual gestures in this now vast body of writing are lecturing, hectoring and finger-wagging: here are all the bad things we eat – sugary, salty and fatty processed foods; too much meat – and here is the latest scientific information about the good things we ought to eat – fresh vegetables and fruit, whole grains, meat as a condiment. The line from the rice pudding debates of a century past to the current dietary admonitions of Jamie Oliver, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and the nutrition scientists is uninterrupted. If only people had better information about what a healthy diet was, they would eat that way. People now have bad information – especially as dispensed from the Big Food and Fast Food industries – and that must be countered. And so the task of the Better Eating writer is to present good information and to make sure that people hear it.

Wilson doesn’t have much to add to the most familiar forms of expert nutritional advice. She, too, starts and finishes with the idea that it is good to eat your vegetables and bad to eat salty, sugary and fatty processed foods. And also bad to eat too much. She reckons that we know enough already about what a healthy diet is and sees no need for yet another science lesson. But, unlike the finger-waggers, she considers that it is worth thinking hard about how we come to acquire bad tastes and she offers an answer intended to help change them. The well-meaning experts lecture us about what we ought to eat; Wilson wants to understand why we eat what we do. And to her immense credit, she thinks that taste, pleasure, emotion, and memory – both fond and horrid – are important parts of the story.

First Bite has all the breath-of-fresh-air appeal of common-sense – and just a few faults. The common sense is that our tastes have little to do with genetics and much to do with learning. All over the world, children start out on milk, but in some cultures they don’t stay on the breast or the bottle very long. They may all begin their eating lives preferring the sweet and disliking the bitter, but cultures diverge, and, in some, children soon come to prefer strongly flavoured and spicy foods, and do not have to be brow-beaten into eating their vegetables. Tastes are learned; once learned, they condense into habits. There is a proverb, “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree”, and Wilson fluently surveys how our food tastes are formed at home, and among our childhood peer groups, and how some of these tastes may become so durable that we think ourselves unable to alter them.

But we are wrong to think that. A major lesson Wilson wants us to draw from the learned nature of tastes is that they may be unlearned: different tastes may be acquired and different habits developed. We have to agree that’s true too and that, in principle, the proverb may be wrong. Many of us have put the tastes of childhood behind us, and some of us, as adults, have come to like things that, only a few years ago, we didn’t. Another proverb has it that “Custom is a second nature”, and while we could take that to mean that habit may be as powerful as heredity, the tag has also been invoked to say that a volitional change in habitual patterns can remake what you take to be innate.

Wilson is an optimist about how parents may get their kids to develop a taste for healthy foods. One favoured idea is the so-called Tiny Tastes regimen, created by charity Weight Concern. At four to seven months, babies will eat all sorts of things, but around the age of two, many children start rejecting new foods, and too many parents then are either defeated by toddler tantrums or start resorting to bribery, disguise and coercion. Wrong. The solution is to offer a pea-sized taste of a despised vegetable, and, if they accept it, the child gets a tick in a box and a glitzy sticker. Pat yourself on the back if it works first time, but, if it doesn’t, repeat the performance. No coercion and no losing your temper. Wilson says she persisted for 10 to 14 days to get cabbage into one of her kids – evidently going through the same process with brussels sprouts, turnips, spinach and so on. (Good luck to you in imitating that sort of heroic endurance.)

The learned nature of taste does indeed imply the possibility of change but it doesn’t mean that it is going to be quick or easy – either for children or ourselves. Wilson acknowledges that change may be hard and even offers some tips on how to lubricate the process. If there is no broccoli in the house, you probably won’t eat any; if there are Pop-Tarts in the house, you probably will eat some; if you want to eat more broccoli, start by paying attention to its sensory delights – “sweet crunchy taste and fluffy florets” – and don’t begin with the idea that it is good for you. Above all, stick to your guns: be motivated and use a double helping of willpower. Now all we need is a book telling us how to be motivated and get more willpower.

• To order First Bite for £9.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.