Babies remember food from the womb
My toddler loves curry. And I mean LOVES curry. In fact, I have visions of her future where all her friends are going to McDonalds or soft play for their birthdays, while we’re tucking into a vindaloo at the local curry house. I can even remember far back during the early days of her weaning when she would spit out a carrot or apple puree only to devour a smooth chicken curry like it was the food of the gods.
While plenty of foods have gone through phases (she’s loved, hated, requested and been offended by melon over the course of 24 hours), her love of curry has been unfaltering. But this all makes complete sense to me. Because I remember during the winter nights of my pandemic pregnancy, where I would gorge on Balti, which I requested again and again as I loved the way it would make the baby in my tummy do somersaults. In fact, I long assumed I was having a girl before my 20 week scan as the old saying ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ is linked to pregnancy cravings.
So it was of no shock to discover that babies remember their favourite foods from the womb.
Research shows that during the first two months of pregnancy, taste buds begin forming and by the time the baby starts swallowing amniotic fluid at week 16, taste pores have developed. As molecules from your meals transfer into your amniotic fluid, he or she will taste their first flavours. However, the flavours in the womb are nowhere near as strong – so although my little one wasn’t tasting her first spicy curry at 16 weeks, she was still tasting enough to recognise it later on.
And foetuses do more than just recognise flavours: they have favourites too. At roughly 15-16 weeks, they will swallow more amniotic fluid when it’s sweet and less when it’s bitter. Plus they can remember their preferences: according to Queen’s University in Belfast, ‘Foetuses exposed to garlic in the womb are more likely to prefer garlic in later life.’ Another study showed that women who drank carrot juice during the last trimester of pregnancy had babies who ate more carrot during weaning than those who avoided it altogether.
This got me thinking in an opportunistic kind of way. If I eat like Joe Wicks during my second pregnancy, then weaning the little one onto pureed vegetables will be as easy as taking candy from a very health-conscious baby. So I made all sorts of plans for my health kick: smoothies, soups and salads. Then what happened? I got extreme ‘morning’ sickness and couldn’t even hold down a fish finger. Worried that I’d created the pickiest of picky eaters, I did some more research. It turns out there are plenty of reasons which give kids their favourite foods. Plus, all of these studies only look at children – not teenagers or adults – as tastes change. So all is not lost for my future family mealtimes.
And if you’re pregnant right now, reading this while eating a Mars bar, don’t beat yourself up – just maybe munch the odd carrot every now and then.
