The Taste Of The Breastmilk Depends On Mom

Mom's milk will taste differently depending on what she eats. So don't leave the broccoli out!

All about breastfeeding

Is your baby hesitant to starting with solid foods? Well, now researchers have found another possible reason for this; the taste of the breastmilk as compared to the flavor of the solid foods.

Compare your own diet while breastfeeding with what you are serving your baby.

Let me guess...

While breastfeeding you were hungry, particularly if you were only breastfeeding. Admit that one or two candy bars went down once in a while... Some coffee maybe (being so exhausted). Not to mention all that delicious foods that you could finally eat again after 9 months of pregnancy.

Now compare this with what you feed your baby.

Mashed vegetables without any spices... Yummy!

What The New Study Found

Since the nursing baby's first contact with different flavors will be through variation of mom's milk, the research team believes that this may very well explain why some babies prefer or refuses to eat certain foods.

The study was carried out with a group of 18 breastfeeding moms, who were asked to consume certain capsules with various flavorings, such as caraway seed, liquorice, menthol, and banana.

After that, samples of their milk were analyzed after 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours. This showed that the flavor did reach the milk almost immediately after the woman consumed it. The different flavors then stayed in the milk for various amounts of time. For example both caraway seed and licorice flavor stayed for over two hours, while banana was gone after one hour. All different flavor compounds were gone after 8 hours.

Implications

My own two youngest kids were very different in their acceptance of solid foods. Our daughter loved it. Our youngest son hated everything but banana. Thinking back, I did eat a lot of bananas while breastfeeding him, simply because our daughter (18 months older) loved banana when she was between 1 and 2 years old. Being more busy with three kids of which two close in age, I probably ate more sweets, less healthy food and drank more coffee when breastfeeding our youngest.

Maybe that is one of the reasons why he was so reluctant to the veggie purees.

Hmm, so here we have (yet another) reason to eat healthy while breastfeeding. Not only will it give you your pre-pregnancy body back much faster, improve the quality of your breast milk, and give you an energy boost. It might also make the transition to solid foods easier for your little one.

Oh, well. When will there be a study showing the benefits of sweets and caffeine while breastfeeding...? ;-)

Just kidding!

Related Content

• The magic components of breast milk
• What foods to eat while breastfeeding (and not)
• Printable checklist on foods while breastfeeding.
• Losing weight while breastfeeding

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Reference: Helene Hausner, Wender L.P. Bredie, Christian Mølgaard, Mikael Agerlin Petersen and Per Moller Physiology And Behavior doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2008.05.007

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