When it comes to baby’s food preference, mother’s diet is important

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2 years ago

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For years, doctors assumed that babies were born without any knowledge of the outside world. But newborn babies can distinguish their mothers’ voices from those of other women and show preference for speech rhythms that match the language of their mothers.

In fact, recent research is offering clues that what a woman eats during pregnancy not only nourishes her baby in the womb but may shape food preferences later in life.

Food preferences are largely cultural. Yet studies have shown that what women eat while pregnant and breastfeeding might affect their child’s taste preferences later in life.

Studies suggest that although a mother’s healthy and varied diet during pregnancy can give her child a head start to healthy eating, she can also pass on flavour preferences to their children, both in the womb and through breast milk.

In one study, scientists at the University of Missouri, USA, testing the maternal diet/offspring taste theory in controlled experiments, found that mothers who drank carrot juice during the last trimester of pregnancy had babies who, once they started weaning, made fewer negative faces when fed carrot juice.

Another 2012 study found that pregnant rats that ate lots of junk food and had diets high in fat, salt, and sugar gave birth to babies who preferred these foods and disliked healthy foods.

Dr Olusoji Jagun, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Sagamu, Ogun State, said it is possible for a mother’s diet to affect her baby’s taste but not her baby’s food preference.

He said babies of women who eat junk food rather than healthy meals gain more weight. “If a woman is eating more complex carbohydrates, the baby is not going to gain as much weight as when she is eating simple sugars,” he declared.

According to Dr Jagun, “soon after a bottle of sugary carbonated drink, there is going to be an increase in foetal activity compared to the person that ate eba because babies feed basically on simple sugars, the digested ones.”

Dr Jagun, however, ruled out the possibility that a pregnant woman’s diet will affect her baby’s food preference.

“If a baby is born in Nigeria and taken to America, he is going to get used to the kind of food they eat in America. The same is the case with a baby born in America but raised in Nigeria. We cannot take it from the context of the mother eating, say, a carrot in pregnancy, and so the child, when born, will also like carrots,” he declared.

Professor Olukayode Akinbami, a consultant paediatrician, pointed out that the quality of a mother’s diet can affect the growth of her unborn baby, the chances of her baby developing some diseases, and the quality of her breast milk.

According to Akinbami, children who inherit genes for some diseases in the right environment end up with the disease flaring up.

“If there is an underground allergy in the gene of the mother, of course there will be an element of it in the baby as well. There are some allergens that the mother may be able to suppress that her baby cannot.

“When in the mother’s womb, the environment therein is the only thing that affects the baby. But outside the womb, the environment now has more allergies that will induce reactions, and then the baby will come down with an allergic reaction.”

Aside from this, Professor Akinbami declared that the diet of a nursing mother can also affect her baby.

“Eating refined food or foods with low fibre content, like bread, could contribute to constipation in her nursing baby. We usually promote a high-fibre diet in children because it will help ensure easy passage of faeces. A child cannot strain to pass out faeces like an adult.

“That is why we promote eating balanced diet to ensure that the breast milk is adequate for that baby. We preach exclusive breast feeding in the first six months of life.”

Food and drink that we ingest are broken down into small molecules by our stomach and intestines and are then absorbed and transferred to our blood stream.

During pregnancy, molecules in the mother’s blood stream, including those that may produce a smell, can be passed to the bloodstream of the unborn baby through the placenta and umbilical cord.

But observational studies support the theory that what women eat while pregnant and breastfeeding might also affect their child’s taste preferences later in life.

In a study in rats, pups exposed to alcohol in the womb were more attracted to water laced with alcohol. The same has been shown in many animal models.

Also, dairy farmers in the 1960s and 1970s grazed their dairy cows on wild garlic and onions to produce milk with distinct flavours.

Experts say that a baby still in the womb starts swallowing amniotic fluid at about 10 to 12 weeks of pregnancy. They swallow hundreds of millilitres a day. It is thought that the senses of taste and smell are well developed by 21 weeks, well before they will eat or drink on their own.

It is not yet clear how a mother’s diet during pregnancy may influence her baby’s taste. Also, more studies still need to be done to know how long this works since, as a child ages, additional cultural, social, and economic factors can influence his or her taste and diet.

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