Professor Nadja Reissland, an expert in foetal and neonatal research and lead author on this study, said: “Our analysis of the babies’ facial expressions suggests that they appear to react more favourably towards the smell of foods their mothers ate during the last months of pregnancy.
“In our study we gave mothers around 20 minutes before the scan either a capsule filled with carrot powder or a capsule filled with kale powder, reaching the foetus around 25 minutes later.”.
“We knew that when we recorded them at 32 and 36 weeks by then the ability to sense flavour had definitely been established, because it’s in the first trimester that the taste buds start to develop and function, around 12-14 weeks,” says Reissland.
“One way of potentially getting babies to like greens is to give mothers some capsules of that, and it might have an effect on how after birth, babies react to it.
“If the mother is in a completely stressed state and has to feed the child and the child doesn’t want to eat, it will be very difficult to get that food into the child’s mouth – which might lead to maternal increased stress during meal times and potentially leading to fussy eating.”.
