Baby's Food Preferences

The research of Julie Mennella who studies taste in infants at the Monell Chemical Sciences Center should give young women reason to consider the diets they eat. An infant in the womb only 21 weeks old can taste foods like vanilla, carrot, garlic, anise, mint, and sugar the mother is consuming. These flavors impregnate both the amniotic fluid which surrounds the baby in the womb and also the mother's milk after the baby is born. Memories of the flavors of foods a mother consumes are formed even before birth and appear to play a role in subsequent food preferences.

I am often told by mothers that their children refuse to eat vegetables or healthy foods. The mother's diet during pregnancy could play a significant role in the food preferences of these children. If you want your children to like broccoli, it will be more likely if you eat the food yourself.

Mennella fed pregnant mothers carrot flavored cereal and observed that their babies made less negative faces when eating it than babies whose mothers had not eaten carrots during pregnancy. Exposing infants to a variety of flavors at a very early age increases the likelihood that they will choose a healthier diet when they are older.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/139033757/babys-palate-and-food-memories-shaped-before-birth

Sweet Addiction

Research suggests that simple sugars like sucrose and fructose have a potent calming effect on distressed newborn infants. Sugar ingestion has an effect similar to morphine in animal models. This is a natural part of our physiology. There is lactose, a simple sugar, in mother's milk. Unfortunately, food processors have taken advantage of this opioid effect of sugars by spiking processed foods with sugars to increase sales of their products.

Administration of opiate antagonists to bulimics and binge eaters decreases food consumption. This suggests that simply reducing the sugars in foods can decrease overall food consumption and promote weight loss.

Smith, Barbara, Ph.D., Sweet Addictions,The Nutrition Report, March 1994;12(3).