A baby’s preference for certain foods is found to begin even before being born! Does this mean that a pregnant mom can attempt to train her child to love healthy food while the little one is still in her womb? Read on…
The food choices women make during pregnancy affect their babies as well as their bodies. However, it has become evident through research that what women eat during pregnancy may also help to shape their babies’ food preferences later in life. While we’ve always known that all food preferences are learned, and that familiarity breeds fondness, what we’ve come to realise now is that this familiarity can begin in the womb. This knowledge gives mothers an upper hand when it comes to pre-shaping their unborn children’s food preferences and help them grow up healthier by default.
Julie Mennella, who studies taste in infants at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, found that every kind of food a pregnant mom eats turns up as flavors in her amniotic fluid, which her baby swallows. It was discovered that there isn’t a single taste or flavor that doesn’t show up in utero! Mennella’s work is published in the journal Pediatrics.
In one study done to determine if flavors are passed from the mother to the baby via the amniotic fluid, Mennella gave pregnant women garlic capsules before taking a routine sample of their amniotic fluid — and then asked a panel of people to smell those samples — (Yes, they sniffed amniotic fluids).
— They could pick out the samples easily from the women who ate garlic. Since a human’s sense of taste is the 90-percent smell, the conclusion was, babies, can taste these flavors when they swallow their mom’s amniotic fluids.” —
Influencing food preferences through breastfeeding
Exposure to a flavor through breast milk is also found to influence an infant’s liking and acceptance of certain foods and flavors. In one such study, researchers found that breast-fed infants were more accepting of a certain fruit than formula-fed infants. The increased acceptance of the fruit could likely be due to more exposure to the fruit flavor when their mothers ate more of those fruits during lactation. If mothers eat fruits and vegetables, breastfed infants will be exposed to these dietary choices by experiencing the flavors in their mom’s milk. This may contribute to greater fruit and vegetable consumption in childhood.
Since Infants develop long-lasting dietary preferences very early in life, pregnant and nursing women are encouraged to consume the most nutritious diets they can manage, with a variety of flavors.
Influencing her baby’s tastebuds
A mother can influence her baby’s tastes and food preferences during pregnancy with the foods that she chooses to eat. Beginning from eight weeks gestation, a baby will have the mechanism to start swallowing the amniotic fluid in the womb. This fluid exposes the baby to different flavours and aromas, hence influencing the child’s acceptance of those foods and flavours later on.
