Taste Preferences Learned in Utero

It’s notoriously difficult to get children to like vegetables, but a new study shows there’s an easy way to get a head start: begin while the baby’s in the womb. Scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have found that flavors of foods that pregnant women consume show up in their amniotic fluid. Babies are exposed to this fluid before birth and come to prefer these prenatal flavors.
This was demonstrated in a study in which pregnant women were assigned to eat carrots during pregnancy or during breastfeeding, or to avoid carrots altogether. Once the babies were old enough to start on solid foods, the researchers offered them cereal made with water or carrot juice. Babies exposed to carrots before birth or during breastfeeding were much more likely to eat the carrot-flavored cereal and seemed to enjoy it. So mothers-to-be should enjoy as many healthy veggies as they can. Babies may still spit out the first mouthful of broccoli, but with repeated exposure they can learn to love it.
[Digestion, online March. 10, 2011]