Babies react in the womb to what their mothers eat: ‘smiles’ at carrots and disgusted faces at cabbages

Humans experience flavor through a combination of taste and smell. In fetuses, it is thought that this could happen by inhaling and swallowing amniotic fluid in the womb. In fact, research suggests that babies can taste and smell even in the womb. However, they are based on results after birth; that is, that the tests have been carried out once the baby has been born. Now, a study led by the Durham University Fetal and Neonatal Research Laboratory in the UK has tested this hypothesis for the first time after taking 4D ultrasound scans of 100 pregnant women to see how their unborn babies responded after being exposed to the flavors of the food consumed by their mothers. The results have just been published in ‘Psychological Science’. Specifically, the researchers looked at how fetuses reacted to carrot or kale flavors shortly after the mothers had eaten those foods. Carrot-exposed fetuses showed more ‘laughing face’ responses, while those exposed to collard greens showed more ‘crying face’ responses. Their findings could improve our understanding of the development of human receptors for taste and smell. The researchers also believe that what pregnant women eat could influence the taste preferences of babies after birth and potentially have implications for establishing healthy eating habits. Lead author Beyza Ustun, a postgraduate researcher at Durham University’s Department of Psychology’s Fetal and Neonatal Research Laboratory, said: “We think this repeated exposure to tastes before birth could help establish food preferences after birth. from birth, which could be important when thinking about messaging around healthy eating and the potential to avoid ‘picky eating’ during weaning.” The experiment The research team, which also included scientists from Aston University, Birmingham, UK, and the National Center for Scientific Research at the University of Burgundy, France, scanned mothers aged 18 to 40, both at 32 and 36 weeks of gestation. The mothers received a single capsule containing approximately 400 mg of carrot or 400 mg of kale powder about 20 minutes before each scan. They were asked not to consume flavored foods or beverages one hour before the scans. The mothers also did not eat or drink anything containing carrot or kale on the day of the scans to control for factors that could affect fetal reactions. Facial reactions observed in both flavor groups, compared to fetuses in a control group, who were not exposed to either flavor, showed that exposure to just a small amount of carrot or kale flavor was sufficient to stimulate a reaction. The next steps Nadja Reissland , Director of the Fetal and Neonatal Research Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, who supervised the research, says: “Previous research in my laboratory has suggested that 4D ultrasound is a way of monitoring the fetal reactions to understand how they respond to maternal health behaviors, such as smoking, and their mental health, including stress, depression, and anxiety. This latest study could have important implications for understanding the earliest evidence of fetal abilities to sense and discriminate different tastes and smells of food eaten by their mothers.” The researchers say their findings could also help inform mothers about the importance of taste and healthy diets during pregnancy. In fact, they have started a follow-up study with the same babies after birth to see if the influence of the tastes they experienced in the womb affects their acceptance of different foods. MORE INFORMATION news No The Webb captures the best image of Neptune’s rings in decades news No The gene that made us smarter than the Neanderthals Jackie Blissett , from Aston University and author of the study, concludes: “It could be argued that the Repeated prenatal exposures to flavors can lead to taste preferences experienced after birth. In other words, exposing the fetus to less ‘pleasant’ flavors, such as kale, could mean that it gets used to those flavors in the womb. The next step is to examine whether fetuses show less ‘negative’ responses to these flavors over time, resulting in greater acceptance of those flavors when babies first taste them outside the womb.”