Breastfed babies get a taste for good food

Danish researchers say babies who are breastfed get a taste for fruit and vegetables from their mother's milk and are more likely to be healthy.

Breast milk is already associated with increased intelligence, greater social mobility and protection against ill health, but it now appears that breastfeeding may also help babies develop taste for healthy food.

Previous studies have shown that breast milk is flavoured by the foods a woman eats and the research team from Copenhagen University suggest that babies exposed to such a variety of tastes may be more adventurous eaters when weaned.

Researcher Helene Hausner says breast feeding may make babies more accepting of the flavour of other foods and may prepare them for flavour changes and new experiences when they start to eat solid foods.

For the study the researchers gave 18 nursing mothers capsules containing a variety of flavours and then tracked how long it took the compounds to appear in their breast milk and they found that while the flavour of banana lingered for under an hour after being eaten, the minty taste of menthol could be picked up for eight hours.

Liquorice and caraway spice reached their peak after two hours and by eight hours the amount of flavour transferred had disappeared from the milk.

The research is published in the New Scientist.