Picky food preferences kick off long before the toddler high chair tantrums. New studies reveal that you can witness the fussy food aversions of babies through a 4D ultrasound. Images from fetuses in the womb show they smiled after their mothers ate carrots but frowned over kale.
“Findings of this study have important implications for understanding the earliest evidence for fetal abilities to sense and discriminate different flavors,” wrote researchers.
There was a new study consisting of 99 pregnant women and their fetuses in England. The fetuses in the study were at 32 to 36 weeks gestation and it was predominately white British women between the ages of 18 and 40.
Researchers gave the moms capsules containing powdered versions of the two foods. Thirty-five of them ingested one medium-sized carrot and 34 women consumed the equivalent of 100 grams of chopped kale. The remaining group of mothers didn’t eat the powdered veggies.
Twenty minutes later, 4D ultrasound scans showed most of the fetuses exposed to kale appeared to wince in disgust, while most exposed to the carrot appeared to laugh. On the other hand, the control group did not have the same responses.
“When fetuses were exposed to carrot flavor, they were more likely to show ‘laughter-face’ reactions, and when they were exposed to kale flavor, they were more likely to show ‘cry-face” reactions,'” researchers added. “We also found that facial responses to flavors became more complex as fetuses matured.”
A response to this study was: “Could it be that these are not the emotions felt by the baby but caused by the feelings of the mother, which releases hormones in the mother’s system, and therefore the baby is just reacting to those hormones?” So, does mom like the carrots more and is it her taste that’s influencing the baby’s expressions?
Whatever the cause of the expressions, the images still exude joy for the viewers. As one person wrote: “This made me laugh out loud. I agree with the babies.”
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976221105460