Breast Milk Flavor May Affect How a Child Eats
Taste of Breast Milk May Affect a Child's Feeding
By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit
July 23, 2008 —

Spend enough time breast-feeding a new baby and that age-old question
will likely pop up: Can what a mother eats affect the taste of her
breast milk?

Curious as to what infants can taste and when, scientists in Denmark
fed various flavor capsules to 18 lactating women. They then took
several milk samples throughout the day and found that what mom eats
can flavor breast milk for up to 8 hours.

Licorice flavor peaked strongly in breast milk two hours after the
capsule, as did the caraway seed flavor. Mint appeared in the mom's
milk at lower concentrations but peaked much later, at six hours after
ingestion. Researchers tried a banana flavor, but concentrations of
banana never came through in the breast milk.

Besides looking for how a mother's diet can affect the taste of her
breast milk, the authors of the study were also looking for evidence
that flavors transferred to breast milk can influence the child's food
preferences later in life.

"During infancy and childhood, individuals are very receptive to
sensory and cognitive learning, and the behaviors established in this
period are most probably important for later preference and food
behaviors," wrote lead author Helene Hausner in the article, which is
published in Physiology & Behavior.

Taste-Testing
"It's sweet. The one time I tried it, it was maple syrupy, but not
overly sweet," said Morgan Kennedy Henderson, 43, of Wellesley, Mass.
about her breast milk.

Henderson, a mother of two, and a lactation consultant with La Leche
League International, says she wasn't too conscious of what she ate
while breast-feeding, but has noticed a difference in the preferences
of children who breast-feed.

"Babies who are breast-fed tend to have a more adventurous palate when
they start eating solids," Henderson said. "Both [of her children]
have been pretty adventurous, both were willing to try things really
early on."

Karen Sussman-Karten, 48, of Newton, Mass., noticed her three children
nursed differently when she ate certain foods. When she ate garlic,
for example, they drank more. She feels a bit sorry for children who
drink only formula.

"We wouldn't want to have the same food tasting the same way day in
and day out," Sussman-Karten said.

The Danish scientists acknowledge that studies on breast milk flavor
are obscure and rare, but some pediatricians and breast-feeding
advocates insist that flavors in breast milk go beyond a simple
enjoyment for the infant -- it might be important for health too.

Flavors Start in the Womb
"The fact that the flavor is passed to the milk is known," said
Nicolas Stettler, assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology
at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He believes that more
studies on the link between mothers' breast milk and the child's
future eating habits could be interesting and potentially influential
to the future of pediatric care.

"They did a study where they randomly assigned pregnant woman to
drinking carrot juice, or not drinking carrot juice," he said. Babies
who were exposed to the carrot juice flavor in milk were more likely
to eat carrots as solid foods.

"I think it would be really interesting to have more specific
knowledge of when exposure to those tastes is really important," said
Stettler. "Parents should be mindful so they can expose the baby to a
variety of foods. You know how it's always a struggle with young
children to eat new food."

Breast-feeding advocate and professor Miriam Labbok has different
advice if more studies confirm the link between food preferences and
flavors in breast milk.

"Generally speaking, that's why we have always thought that babies
have preferred cuisines of their culture," said Labbok, who is also
the director of the Center for Infant and Young Child Feeding and Care
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"In a way, it confirms, that when you begin adding in solid foods,
that the family foods are better," said Labbok. "What the mother takes
in, the child experiences, it's one more way for the child to become
part of the family."

Labbok has never seen any studies on breast milk and flavors, but she
certainly has heard anecdotes about it. "I think that's kind of neat,"
she said. "You always hear these old wives' tales; well these old
wives are pretty smart."

Radha Chitale from the ABC News Medical Unit contributed to this
report.

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