Learning to like vegetables during breastfeeding: a randomized clinical trial of lactating mothers and infants

Abstract

Background: What lactating mothers eat flavors breast milk and, in turn, modifies their infants' acceptance of similarly flavored foods. Objective: We sought to determine the effects of the timing and duration of eating a variety of vegetables during breastfeeding on the liking of vegetables in both members of the dyad. Design: We conducted a randomized controlled study of 97 motherinfant dyads. Lactating mothers drank vegetable, beet, celery, and carrot juices for 1 mo beginning at 0.5, 1.5, or 2.5 mo postpartum or for 3 mo beginning at 0.5 mo postpartum. The control group drank equal volumes of water and avoided drinking the juices. Mothers rated the tastes of the juices and self-reported dietary intakes at each monthly visit (0.5-4.5 mo). After weaning, when 7.9 mo of age, infants' acceptance of plain, carrot-flavor (exposed flavor), and broccoliflavor (nonexposed flavor) cereals was assessed on separate days. Results: The timing of exposure affected the acceptance of the carrot flavor that did not generalize to the novel broccoli flavor. A relatively brief experience (1 mo) with vegetable flavors in mothers' milk, starting at 0.5 mo postpartum, was sufficient to shift the hedonic tone, which resulted in a faster rate of eating carrot-flavored cereal than that in infants who were exposed during subsequent months or not at all. One month of exposure had a greater effect than 3 mo of exposure or no exposure. Regardless of when exposure occurred, infants were less likely to display facial expressions of distaste initially when eating the carrot cereal. Over time, mothers liked the tastes of carrot, beet, and celery juices more, but no changes in dietary intake of vegetables were observed. Conclusions: Early life may be an optimum time for both infants and their mothers to learn to like the taste of healthy foods. More research is needed to facilitate the liking and eating of these foods by mothers, which will, in turn, increase the likelihood of their feeding these foods to their children. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01667549.Am J Clin Nutr 2017;106:67-76.

A systematic review of practices to promote vegetable acceptance in the first three years of life

“…Another way of exposing children to the flavour of vegetables is during pregnancy and breastfeeding. There is evidence that the mothers' diet can influence their infants' taste preferences through exposure via their amniotic fluid during pregnancy and via breast milk during breastfeeding (Mennella, Daniels, & Reiter, 2017;Mennella, et al, 2001;Ventura, 2017). Also the higher variation of taste in maternal milk compared to formula-milk is believed to increase acceptance of novel foods (Mennella & Beauchamp, 1991).…”

Patterns of Complementary Feeding Behaviors Predict Diet Quality in Early Childhood

“…Additionally, much of the research has focused on very young babies or preschool-aged children, but little is known about the infant-toddler period, which may be the most critical window for shaping dietary preferences [8]. Previous research focused on the milk feeding period in infancy has demonstrated that this may be a sensitive period for the development of flavor preferences in both breastfed [14,15] and formula-fed [16][17][18] babies, but less is known about the impact of flavor exposure as a result of CF behaviors. There is also little research in U.S. populations, where CF feeding practices differ from other cultures.…”

Sensory characteristics of human milk: Association between mothers' diet and milk for bitter taste

“…The more varied the mother's diet is during lactation, the more varied the flavor of her milk (Mennella, 2007); this could explain why children who were breastfed are less picky and more willing to try new foods as they grow compared with children who were fed formula (Galloway et al, 2003). A recent study showed that drinking carrot and broccoli juice during breastfeeding increased the infant's acceptance of carrot-flavored cereal several months later, but did not affect acceptance of broccoliflavored cereal (Mennella et al, 2017). Consistent with this is that duration of breastfeeding was shown to be a predictor of vegetable intake (de Wild et al, 2018).…”