Being the offspring of two Dubliners, the meals I was brought up on were hearty, filling and, frankly, very Irish. And for this I’m thankful. Childhood for me meant beef in Guinness stew, colcannon, coddle and homemade rice pudding. It meant fry ups for breakfast, ice cream at the beach and, of course, more Guinness.

So it might be obvious where my adult palate comes from. As you know, I’m a big fan of good food and good beer because that was how I was brought up.

But it’s not just me. According to a study on the subject, our three most cherished and easily remembered childhood memories are of food. The most popular being Christmas dinner, then fish and chips at the seaside and in third place, and I’m not sure if this is surprising or not, is school dinners.

School dinners certainly don’t enter into my memories (except that they were excellent at Tavy College and only cost 15p) and as far as Christmas dinner goes, I’m more partial to our Christmas Eve tradition of honey and mustard roast gammon with parsley sauce, mash and peas.

And while I love thinking back to those days of mountainous fry-ups, Milky Ways (shared with my dog Tramp) and enough Barnbrack fruitcake to put the Famous Five to shame, it seems these memories can also hold us back from trying new things.

Another study about how food memories influence our tastes (glad to see the researchers are focusing on the important stuff), which concluded when it comes to trying new food, we’re a nation of big girl’s blouses.

Apparently 70% of us still eat the meals that gave us our fondest early memories. As a big fan of Irish lamb stew and soda bread I can’t argue. But for many it goes a step further. 24% of us claim to dislike food we’ve never tried!

I hope I’m not part of that group.

One of my late teenage memories though was watching the razor shell clams in northern Spain wriggling around in the fish tank. They’d look up and squeeze their little bodies in and out of their shells as if they were teasing me. Then the café owner would blast them with the steam spout on the coffee machine and hand them to me in a paper packet. Closest thing to a condom I’ve ever eaten, eek!

On reflection I probably didn’t have the best survival instinct when it came to food. I’d eat pretty much anything that was placed in front of me. Except the fried egg and baked beans in a fry up. And you don’t want to know how I hid those bad boys to save myself from their perils!

But I’d still rather have my cavalier attitude than count myself in the 18% of people who’d be unwilling or nervous about eating an olive. So who knows, maybe we’re all so committed to the meals we remember and love that we’re afraid to try new things. Or maybe our palates are based on what we enjoyed as a child.

Either way I’d encourage you to embrace any opportunity to try something new. If you don’t like it you only have to think back to your childhood to find something you do like. And while we’re on the subject, how about starting to educate your own children’s tastes – it could be an experience that lasts a lifetime.

If you’d like to read more about food memories, I would certainly recommend Nigel Slater’s Toast. Brilliantly laugh out loud funny, Toast will certainly make you smile and reminisce. And the book Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger and Toast [DVD] are an absolute steal on Amazon!

We’d also love to hear your food memories and your stories too, so feel free to leave your comments below.