IF YOU thought that breast milk must taste rather bland, think again. Human milk provides a veritable cornucopia of different flavour combinations that may prime a child to try new foods later on.
Previous studies suggested that what a mother eats can affect the taste preferences of her child. For example, the infants of mothers who drank carrot juice during pregnancy or breastfeeding seemed to prefer carrot-flavoured cereal.
To get a handle on how flavours from a mother鈥檚 diet get transferred into her milk, Helene Hausner and her colleagues at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark asked 18 lactating mothers to provide a sample of breast milk before they ate capsules containing the same compounds that give caraway seed, menthol, banana and liquorice their flavour, and then at regular intervals afterwards.
Advertisement
They found that different flavours take varying amounts of time to appear in breast milk. While concentrations of the caraway and liquorice compounds peaked 2 hours after the mother ate them, the banana compound could only be detected in the milk during the first hour after consumption. Menthol was present at relatively stable levels for between 2 and 8 hours after consumption (Physiology and Behaviour, ).
All four flavours had disappeared from the women鈥檚 breast milk eight hours after they ate the capsules. However, there was considerable variation between the women in how the flavours were transferred to milk.
鈥淗uman milk is clearly a substance which varies considerably in flavour over time and between different people,鈥� says Gary Beauchamp of the in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who has also studied how flavours pass into breast milk.
The findings could have practical implications for mothers worried about why their infant is refusing to feed, says Gill Rapley, a UK nurse with more than 20 years鈥� experience specialising in postnatal care. 鈥淢others often talk about whether something in their milk may have upset their baby, but within 8 hours most flavours will be gone.鈥�
Preliminary results from Hausner also suggest that breastfed infants might be more receptive to new flavours than bottle-fed ones. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not like if the mother eats apple pie the baby thinks 鈥榤mmm, apple pie鈥�, but it may make them more accepting of the flavour of other foods,鈥� she says. 鈥淏reastfeeding may prepare the infant for flavour changes and new experiences when they start to eat solid foods.鈥�
Mothers of bottle-fed infants should not despair, however. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 breastfeed you should change the brand of formula milk you use from time to time,鈥� says Hausner, who has also found that different brands of formula milk vary in taste.
