If you were a fussy eater as a child, refusing vegetables because you thought they tasted gross, you now have one more thing to blame on your parents. According to new research published in Developmental Psychobiology, detailed by The Guardian, food preferences may start forming while you’re still in the womb, and they seem to depend heavily on what your mother ate during pregnancy.
Your mom is the reason you hate broccoli. Or, in the case of the study’s vegetable of choice, kale.
Researchers led by Durham University tracked how children reacted to certain vegetable smells years after being exposed to those same flavors before birth. During pregnancy, some mothers were given kale powder capsules while others took carrot powder capsules. Scientists then studied the reactions of their babies using ultrasound scans before birth, facial observations at three weeks old, and some more follow-up testing at three years old.
They found that children who were exposed to carrot flavors in the womb consistently reacted more positively to the smell of carrots later in life and grimaced more when exposed to kale. The kale group showed the opposite pattern. The researchers say that the findings suggest the fetuses may be forming long-term flavor memories before they are even born.
It sounds absurd, but there is a logic to it, considering what we already know about fetuses. We know that they already react to sounds and light. We know that they will respond to some of their mother’s movements. Knowing that, maybe it isn’t a stretch to assume that, given the evidence, they might be more inclined to voluntarily eat a vegetable if their mom ate it when she was pregnant.
The researchers think that if this holds, there’s no reason to believe it can’t be used as a tool for getting your kids in the rhythm of eating healthier foods before they’re even born, and all you have to do is essentially force-feed it to them when they’re locked in a belly prison. At that point, you just have to hope the mom can stand the taste of the kinds of veggies kids usually hate, like kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and peas.
A caveat here is that the study was pretty small, involving only a dozen children, so the researchers are trying not to hype up these results too much. That is the beauty of scientific research. One team makes a discovery, and another team can either confirm it or debunk it. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to eat as healthily as you can while pregnant, not just to ensure that it gets all the vital nutrients it needs, but so you don’t have to put up with its obnoxious hissy fit when you’re just trying to feed the ungrateful bastard some damn peas, and they’re just throwing them at your face.
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