New mums can pass on their love of certain foods to their babies via their breast milk, research has suggested.
By eating particular types of food up to an hour before feeding time, a mother essentially creates a milkshake inside her, which will give the baby the chance to become used to new flavours, according to the University of Copenhagen study.
Researchers found that women could make their milk taste of bananas, menthol, caraway seed and liquorice – quite how they tested this is left to the imagination.
Concentrations of caraway and liquorice peaked after two hours, while banana was found in breast milk only after the first hour it was eaten. Menthol was found to change the flavour of the mil for up to eight hours.
Helene Hausner, who led the research, told New Scientist magazine: “It’s not like if the mother eats apple pie the baby thinks, ‘Mmm, apple pie’, but it may make them more accepting of the flavour of other foods.”
In another study, research from Birmingham University found that babies raised on beige foods such as rusks and baby food from a jar develop a taste for other beige foods, such as chips.
