Pre-and posnatal exposure to the flavor of carrots affects the infants'acceptance of carrot-flavored cereal

摘要

Does experience with a flavor in amniotic fluid or mother’s milk modify the infant’s acceptance of similarly flavored foods at weaning? To investigate this question, we randomly formed three groups of pregnant women (n = 45) who planned on breastfeeding their infants. The women consumed either 300 ml of carrot juice or water for 4 days per week for three consecutive weeks during the last trimester of pregnancy and then again during the first 2 months of lactation. The mothers in group 1 drank carrot juice during pregnancy and water during lactation; mothers in group 2 drank water during pregnancy and carrot juice during lactation; whereas those in group 3 drank water during both pregnancy and lactation. Approximately 4 weeks after the mothers began com-plementing their infants’ diet with cereal, the infants, who were, on average, 5.5 ± 0.1 months, were videotaped as they fed, in counter-balanced order, cereal prepared with water on one testing .Xay amX cereaX prepare’X vAtW carrot ~ice on tVw otBex. Xn~atxts fed at their customary pace until they refused the cereal three consecutive times. Immediately after each feeding session, the mothers rated their infants’ enjoyment of the food on a nine-point scale. The results demonstrated that the infants who had exposure to the flavor of carrots in either amniotic fluid or mother’s milk consumed significantly more of the carrot-flavored cereal and wereperceived by their mothers as enjoying the carrot-flavored cereal more when compared with infants without such exposure. These findings are the first experimental evidence to demonstrate that ex-posure to a flavor, either pre- or postnatally, influences the human infant’s acceptance and enjoyment of similarly flavored foods.Supported by a grant from the Gerber Companies Foundation and NIH Grant HD371 19.