Before she was a year old, Zoe LoSasso was introduced to the sharp, earthy taste of white truffle purée. Now 10, she doesn't remember that, but it hardly seems an accident that she loves yuca-crusted snapper with kimchee aioli, roasted broccoli with garlic and pizza topped with crushed red pepper. Like a growing number of American kids, the fifth grader is being raised as an adventuresome eater.

``It's a fatal mistake to assume kids like bland food,'' says Zoe's father, Dewey LoSasso, chef-owner of the North Miami restaurant North One 10. ``Just the other day, I ordered steamed clams for my kids at a little place on the Hollywood Broadwalk and the waiter acted like I was a crazy. He was expecting me to order mozzarella sticks.''

Judging from a wave of new books and an increasing number of restaurants with creative children's menus, a junior foodie movement is coming into its own. It's all about thinking outside the Happy Meal box.

For many parents, exposing children to an eclectic range of dishes is a way of sharing a personal passion, but research suggests it's a way of developing healthful eating habits, too. There's evidence that food preferences are formed at an early age and that kids can be taught to favor the flavors of vegetables and other good-for-you foods.

``When you look at long-term studies, one of the predictors of whether children are eating fruits and vegetables when they're 8 and 9 is what they ate at age 2,'' says Julie Mennella, a biopsychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia.

``What types of food we like begins early,'' Mennella says. ``That kind of learning goes through life.''

Humans are born with a preference for sweet, high-energy food, such as mother's milk and fruit, the researcher says. A taste for salt develops at about 4 months of age, but acquiring a taste for bitter foods, such as spinach and broccoli, requires repeated exposure.

Mennella's research shows that our first food experiences occur even before we begin eating. In a 1995 study, she found garlic odor in the amniotic fluid of expectant moms. In another study, published in the December 2007 issue of the journal Pediatrics, she found that babies were more accepting of foods their mothers had eaten while nursing.

``It's a beautiful system,'' Mennella says. ``Flavors from the mother's diet are transmitted through amniotic fluid and mother's milk. A baby learns to like a food's taste when the mother eats that food on a regular basis.

``Vegetable and fruit consumption is linked to lower risks of obesity and certain cancers. If we can get babies to learn to like these tastes, we can get them off to an early start of healthy eating.''

8 TO 15 TRIES

Researchers have found that it can take eight to 15 attempts before some children accept certain foods. And how many moms and dads have the patience for that?

``As a parent, when you come home, you're tired at the end of the day and the last thing you want to do is battle over what to eat,'' says Nancy Tringali Piho, author of My Two-Year-Old Eats Octopus: Raising Children Who Love to Eat Everything, due out in November ($16.95, Bull Publishing).

``It's so much easier to say, `OK, fine, I'll get a box of macaroni.' That's clearly how you get into the chicken fingers rut. You flash forward a month or a year later and before you know it, that's all they're going to eat. It happens so quickly, but with a little bit of vigilance, you can avoid that.''