About a year ago I wrote about my favorite benefit of breastfeeding: how breastfed babies get a taste of the foods in the mother's diet, and perhaps as a result are less likely to resist these foods when they're older.
At the time we were eating our way through the San Francisco Bay Area, and I was reflecting on how well my son can tolerate spicy foods - foods which I ate through my pregnancy and breastfeeding. Now, I know that this doesn't necessarily work for every baby, but I do think it's remarkable how breastfeeding can affect a child's food preferences.
A study released last week in Pediatrics confirms that breastfeeding affects "food acceptance," though only if the mother eats the food regularly. As reported in the press:
“Flavours 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,” said Julie Mennella, of Monell Chemical Senses Center, a research institute in Philadelphia, who did the study.
The technique can work for a variety of vegetables. In one experiment Mennella gave carrot juice to a group of pregnant women and to a separate group of breast-feeding women. Their babies were subsequently keener on carrots than those born to women who had not been given carrot juice.
[Another study] involved feeding green beans to women with older babies who were being breast-fed but also eating solids. Initially the babies rejected the vegetables but after their mothers began eating beans, the children acquired a taste for them too.
“Babies are born with a dislike for bitter tastes,” said Mennella. “If mothers want their babies to learn to like to eat vegetables, especially green vegetables, they need to provide them with opportunities to taste these foods.”
Sound familiar - or unfamiliar - to any of you?
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