Babies remember (and prefer) smells, flavors from mom’s meals during pregnancy

The study shows that eating is difficult to satisfy it may start before the child’s birth

Durham, England – Parents fight everywhere with making their children eat vegetables, especially bitter vegetables such as turnip and broccoli. A new international study indicates that this challenge may be dealt with a long time before the child eaten the first bite of solid foods. Researchers have discovered that children can remember and prefer flavors while they are in the womb, and to open new possibilities for developing healthy eating habits from the early stages of life.

This international cooperation, led by researchers from Durham University in the United Kingdom, as well as scientists from the University of Aston and the University of Burgundy in France, provides longitudinal evidence on how flavor preflections and continuation of early childhood have evolved. The study, published in appetiteIt depends on its findings in 2022 that used 4D ultrasound scannings to monitor how embryos interact with different flavors in the womb.

“This indicates that the process of developing food preferences begins in a much earlier time than we thought, from the uterus.

During pregnancy, flavors caused by the mother system into the amniotic fluid surrounding the child. Humans suffer from flavor through a mixture of taste and smell, and embryos face these feelings by inhaling and swallowing the amniotic fluid. By the last third of pregnancy, children have developed sophisticated sensory systems enough to discover and respond to these flavor molecules.

“The embryos are only discovered accurate amounts of all kinds of flavors that mothers delay, but they interact with them publicly and remember them while they are in the womb and then after birth for a long time.” In France. “In this way, mothers have an early role in early teaching, as a presenter of the memories of the aroma or the first flavor of the child.”

The research team employed pregnant women in 32 weeks of pregnancy, starting from 99 participants. Because of the restrictions of Covid-19, the final study group included 32 healthy infants divided between males and females. These husbands were divided from the mother into two groups: one group of turnip capsules consumed, while the other took carrot capsules.

To track children’s responses, researchers used advanced face coding systems that analyzed specific expressions. They have searched for two main types of responses: “Gestalts Cry-FACE”, which indicates discontent (similar to when an adult may be common in unpleasant taste), and “Gestalts Face-FACE”, which indicates pleasure or acceptance (closer to The smile of enjoyment).

After the initial ultrasound scannings, mothers have taken specific vegetable capsules several times a week for three consecutive weeks, and consumed them between morning and early. Timing consistency helped control any possible differences in how to treat flavors or transfer them to the amniotic fluid.

When children reached nearly three weeks of age, the research team conducted a new tested test. Prepare wet cotton swabs dipped either carrot powder, turnip powder or normal water as a control element. Each tin was carefully held under the noses of infants while their reactions were recorded on the video. More importantly, children never taste the materials, their responses depended on the smell.

“Our analysis of facial expressions for children indicates that they seem to be more positively interacting with the smell of the foods that their mothers have eaten during the last months of pregnancy,” says co -author of the co -Nadja Reseland, of the Fetal and Woldan Research Laboratory at Durham University. “It is possible that this means that we can encourage children to respond more positively to green vegetables, for example, by exposing these foods during pregnancy.”

The results revealed a great pattern: children showed less negative and more positive facial expressions when exposed to the smell of vegetables that their mother consumed during pregnancy.

“These results add the weight of evidence that the food flavors that mothers eat during the late pregnancy, and their preparation for flavors that it is likely to test in a postpartum life,” says Professor Jackie Plytet, co -author. Aston University.

Understanding how food preferences develop can prevent eating behaviors that are difficult to satisfy. Many children show strong signs of bitter flavors, which are believed to be part of the fungal survival mechanism that partially evolved to protect from toxic vegetable vehicles. However, these new results indicate that early exposure through a mother’s diet may help to overcome these natural interests.

The research team emphasizes that this study is a fundamental understanding of the flavor before birth. Future research trends include longer follow -up studies to track how these early preferences affect eating behaviors throughout childhood. In addition, the researchers hope to explore how different cultural food practices can affect the acceptance of the fetus of various flavors, as this initial study focused only on the children of white British mothers.

Scientists are also planning to investigate how postpartum experiments interact, such as feeding formula with different taste profiles, with prenatal flavor memories. Understanding these complex reactions can help develop more effective strategies to enhance healthy eating habits than the closest phase of development.