Children’s vegetable preferences begin in the womb, study suggests

Exposing unborn babies to vegetable flavors through the maternal diet may reduce children’s reluctance to eat vegetables, researchers reported.

Many parents try strategies such as reading books like “The Boy Who Loved Broccoli” or disguising vegetables with ketchup and yogurt.

Others have mixed avocado and fruit with Greek yogurt and called it ice cream.

Some simply resort to bribery.

The study suggests a more effective approach—starting before birth.

Researchers found that young children are less likely to react negatively to the smell of vegetables they were repeatedly exposed to in the womb.

The implications could be significant. Prof. Nadja Reissland of Durham University, the study’s lead author, said a consequence would be “that you have a healthier population.”

Researchers gave some pregnant women kale powder capsules and others carrot powder capsules.

They examined the facial reactions of the children to carrot or kale, first via ultrasound before birth, then at about three weeks old, and most recently with 12 children at age three.

The images of a child exposed to carrots reacting positively to a carrot-scented swab and grimacing at kale speak volumes.

The reaction of the children exposed to kale was similar—they were happy to smell kale but not carrot.

Reissland said the same patterns were repeated before birth, at three weeks, and at three years.

“What we see over time is that the children are still more favourable to vegetables they were exposed to while they were in the womb. From this we can suggest that being exposed to a particular flavour in late pregnancy can result in long-lasting flavour or odour memory in children, potentially shaping their food preferences years after birth.”

Reissland said the team selected carrot and kale powder capsules after some pregnant women rejected drinking large amounts of kale or carrot juice for the study.

“Some of them said absolutely not. They were choking, couldn’t do it. I mean, it was all really good juice, very expensive.”

Reissland acknowledged the research, funded by Aston University in Birmingham, involved a small sample of mothers and children. “We really need to do a much bigger study and if we had the funding, we would.”

She said it would not cost much to give vegetable powder capsules to pregnant women to promote a healthier population.

The idea could be adapted to different cultures. “I’ve just come back from Japan … where you get loads and loads of fish. It is a different type of healthy eating, but if you get the foetus used to that food, then in later life they might be much more interested in eating healthily.”

The study included researchers at universities in France, the Netherlands, and the UK’s Cambridge and Aston universities.

One co-author, Dr. Beyza Ustun-Elayan of the University of Cambridge, said: “These findings open up new ways of thinking about early dietary interventions, suggesting that flavours from the maternal diet during pregnancy may quietly shape children’s responses to foods years later.”

Another co-author, Dr. Benoist Schaal from the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in France, said: “This study confirms that human foetuses can sense the flavours of foods that pregnant mothers eat, which might affect what they will like for years after birth. Research is needed on other odorants and how they affect the foetus and child.”

Reissland said there was still much to learn about what affects the foetus, pointing to artificial sweeteners in many products, including toothpaste.

The paper, “Do Human Fetuses Form Long-Lasting Chemosensory Memories?,” is published in the journal Developmental Psychobiology.