Food Preference Starts Early

An ongoing pan-european research project called INFABIO is looking at infant feeding practices and the development of food preferences. (You can read about other food preference research here).

There is quite a bit of evidence that babies who are breastfed have less neophobia about foods- they take to new tastes more easily than bottle-fed babies. The possible reason is that the flavour of breastmilk is subject to subtle changes, depending on the mother's diet, whereas formula milk always tastes the same.

Apparently, there is also evidence that babies can taste and smell some strong flavours, like garlic, while still in the womb as the phenol compounds responsible for the distincive taste can be found in amniotic fluid.

I'm glad that they know about the flavours by measuring phenols. Being a researcher is difficult enough.