Healthy Eating Begins in the Womb
It’s never too late to start eating well—but it’s especially true that it’s never too early. Eating a whole-food, nutrient-dense diet while pregnant and breastfeeding is crucial for setting up your child’s life-long health.
Ensuring Your Child Eats Well From the Very Start
Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research organization in Philadelphia, have made important discoveries about the role a pregnant woman’s diet plays in developing her baby’s future taste preferences. They found that flavors in the amniotic fluid and then in breast milk transfer to the baby in an education process that tells the baby what foods are safe and preferred by her mother.
According to the Monell researchers, babies who were exposed to a wide range of flavors in the womb, through their mothers’ diverse and varied diets, and later through flavors in breast milk, are more open to different and varied flavors as babies and children. Conversely, babies who were not exposed to those varied flavors show aversions to trying new and different flavors.
A fundamental feature of mammals is the first way we learn is through the flavors that transfer to amniotic fluid and then mother’s milk,” said Julie Mennella, a biopsychologist and researcher at the Monell Center. “Babies whose mothers eat certain foods are more accepting of those foods at weaning. There are also differences between breastfed and formula-fed infants . . . because these babies have gotten more cues [by] learning about these flavors in mother’s milk. So it’s a beautiful, elegant, simple system, and then baby learns what mother is eating, what she has access to, and what she likes; this way Mom teaches us what foods are safe.”
Mennella emphasizes that this system works only when the mother eats a wide range of nutritious foods so the baby is exposed to a range of flavors. After weaning, the baby should be eating the same foods as the rest of the family—not baby foods.
As I wrote about in my last post (link here): The very idea of “baby food” is a modern, marketing scheme. Babies need to eat food. Whole foods. Just like we do.
Mennella laments the introduction of baby cereals and other bland baby foods. “We can’t just feed babies separately from their families or caregivers. Like with all cultures — eat the healthy foods: fruits and vegetables, grains, and meats that you like because it gives the baby the opportunity to like them as well,” she said.
The Whole Egg
A new four-week online course STARTS TOMORROW!
If you’d like to take a deeper dive on feeding babies and kids, join me for a new online class. It’s called “The Whole Egg for Parents” and together we will explore the latest in nutrition and health essentials for parents.
Dates: Tuesdays March 10, March 17, March 24, March 31
Time: 1-2 pm Eastern, 10-11 am Pacific via Zoom
Fee: $130
Healthy Food, not Baby Food
In the case of many baby food products, like bland cereals, these are often foods that are never consumed again. “You don’t have to learn to like no-texture food, like pudding or cereal; but you do have to learn to like the complex variety of foods we have.”
Babies are also born with an innate preference for sweet foods, but they need to learn to like other flavors and eventually accept them with repeated exposure. The trouble is, in our current food landscape, many babies are never getting that exposure because their mothers are simply not eating those foods, nor are they feeding those foods to their children.
“Children are very vulnerable to the current food environment because their biology favors sweet and salt—but they need experiences to learn to like these other foods,” Mennella said. “It’s going to be harder for them to accept vegetables than fruits. Baby doesn’t have to learn anything when it comes to sweet, they are born liking sweet. They’ve got that in their DNA.”
Researchers at the University of Oregon found that the food industry works to “fundamentally change children’s tastes preferences to increase their liking of highly processed and less nutritious foods.” One of those researchers, Bettina Cornwell said that the food industry is unquestionably shaping the palates of children, often before they have a chance to learn to like nutritious whole foods.