The strange, yet practical, wisdom of kids

Ben(5), and Luke(3) seems to have an uncanny ability to understand the following, which I can’t entirely explain.

1.) Classify a new foodstuff as either a vegetable or fruit with almost perfect accuracy, even foods they’ve never seen before, such as a celery root.  I hesitantly propose that the following heuristics are involved, although I am unsure as to the hierarchy into which they are organized.

• It’s ugly – vegetable
• it’s colorful – fruit (although identification of an eggplant as vegetable was correct, and this doesn’t hold for carrots).
• Some as yet understands olfactory skill that can pick up subtle cues from the different odors fruit and vegetables put off.  This could actually be proven experimentally.

Interestingly, a quick poll showed that they differed on the classification of a tomato.  Luke classified it as a fruit, whereas Ben classified it as vegetable.  This seems to match the confusion present in the general populace as to the tomatoes classification. I, myself, am not sure of it’s classification without googling it.
2.) Know when someone is opening up some junkfood.  I believe their subconcious picks up on some minute crinkling sound, which keys up their concious to immediately seek out said junkfood.  This goes hand in hand with Luke’s(3) ability to know when packaged candy is chocolate or not.

BenWithSwordInKitchen

BenWithSwordInKitchen

Originally uploaded by thomastaranowski.

Picture of Ben fighting dragons in the kitchen.