Early flavor learning promotes acceptance of healthy foods
source: Eurekalert.org Date: 12/3/07
Moms, want your baby to learn to like fruits and vegetables? According
to new research from the Monell Center, if you’re breast feeding, you
can provide baby
with a good start by eating them yourself.
with a good start by eating them yourself.
And,
offer your baby plenty of opportunities to taste fruits and vegetables
as s/he makes the transition to solid foods by giving repeated feeding
exposures to these healthy foods — regardless of whether you’re breast
feeding or using formula.
“Vegetable and fruit consumption is
linked to lower risks of obesity and certain cancers,” says senior
author Julie A. Mennella, PhD. “The best predictor of how much fruits
and vegetables children eat is whether they like the tastes of these
foods. If we can get babies to learn to like these tastes, we can get
them off to an early start of healthy eating.”
The study,
designed to test the influence of early sensory experiences on the
development of healthy eating patterns, is published in the December
2007 issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Mennella and co-author
Catherine A. Forestell, PhD, studied 45 infants, 20 of whom were
breastfed. The infants, who were between the ages of four and eight
months and unaccustomed to eating solids other than cereal, were
randomly assigned to one of two groups.
One group was fed
green beans for eight consecutive days; the other was given green beans
and then peaches over the same period. Acceptance of both foods was
assessed before and after the repeated exposure period.
The
results revealed that breast-feeding confers an advantage for baby’s
acceptance of foods during weaning — but only if the mother regularly
eats those foods.
During their first exposure to peaches,
breast-fed infants ate more and for a longer period of time, compared
to formula-fed infants. Questionnaires revealed that mothers of
breast-fed infants ate more fruits than did formula-feeding mothers,
suggesting that the enhanced peach acceptance of their infants might be
attributed to increased exposure to fruit flavors through breast milk.
However,
both groups of mothers reported eating green beans and green vegetables
infrequently, at levels below current recommendations. Accordingly,
there was no difference in the amount of green beans eaten by
breast-fed and formula-fed infants the first time the vegetables were
offered.
“It’s a beautiful system,” says Mennella. “Flavors
from the mother’s diet are transmitted through amniotic fluid and
mother’s milk. So, a baby learns to like a food’s taste when the mother
eats that food on a regular basis.”
In both groups, repeated
opportunities to taste green beans over eight days enhanced acceptance
of the vegetable, increasing intake by almost three-fold.
“Babies
are born with a dislike for bitter tastes,” explains 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.”
The researchers also
found that babies’ facial expressions did not always match their
willingness to continue feeding, noting that infants innately display
facial expressions of distaste to certain flavors.
They urge
caregivers to provide their infants with repeated opportunities to
taste fruits and vegetables, focusing on the infant’s willingness to
eat the food instead of on their negative facial expressions during
eating.
Dr. Forestell’s current affiliation is Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary.
The
Monell Chemical Senses Center is a nonprofit basic research institute
based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For 39 years, Monell has been the
nation’s leading research center focused on understanding the senses of
smell, taste and chemical irritation: how they function and affect
lives from before birth through old age. Using a multidisciplinary
approach, scientists collaborate in the areas of: sensation and
perception, neuroscience and molecular biology, environmental and
occupational health, nutrition and appetite, health and well being, and
chemical ecology and communication. For more information about Monell,
visit www.monell.org.
FUNDING: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Canadian Institutes of Health.
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