Babies acquire food dislikes before likes, study suggests

28-Aug-2013 - Last updated on 29-Aug-2013 at 07:38 GMT

Related tags Infant

Basic flavour preferences are known to start developing even before birth – but revulsion may be less changeable than liking in infants, according to new research.

Writing in the journal Flavour, the French researchers said they found that infants were more likely to react strongly to unpleasant food odours than to those that adults commonly perceive as pleasant.

Most studies of how children react to food odours has been conducted in new-born babies and those older than two. This latest study aimed to fill the gap in our knowledge of how food preferences develop, by following the same 235 infants and challenging them with the same food odours at the age of 8 months, 12 months and 22 months.

The researchers presented the infants with eight odours in bottles – four rated by adults as pleasant, including strawberry, apple and vanillin, and four rated by adults as unpleasant, such as rotten egg and shrimp. They then measured the infants’ reaction to the odours by their ‘mouthing’ of the bottles, meaning direct contact of the bottles in the area around the babies’ nose and mouth, and avoidance.

“They [infants] avoid most of the food odours considered as unpleasant by adults, but their attraction towards food-odours judged pleasant by adults does not appear to be fully shaped at this early age,” the study’s authors found. “Taken as a whole, the present results highlight both the plasticity of hedonic responses to food odours, and relatively stable avoidance behaviours towards some unpleasant odours.”

During the first two years of life, the eating pattern of infants diversifies from a milk-based diet to baby foods to table foods – and by two years, many infants become reluctant to try new foods. Therefore, the researchers aimed to assess how olfactory responses developed during this period of transition.

They hypothesised that infants’ likes and dislikes would increasingly mirror those of adults as they transitioned toward regular table foods. However, although their reaction to unpleasant odours tended to align with adult reactions, their reaction to odours rated as pleasant remained more neutral than the adult ratings during the first two years of life.

The researchers also aimed to discover any differences between how male and female babies reacted to the food odours, but they found no difference between genders.

Source: Flavour

2013, Vol. 2 Iss. 19 doi:10.1186/2044-7248-2-19

“Infants’ hedonic responsiveness to food odours: a longitudinal study during and after weaning (8, 12 and 22 months)”

Authors: Sandra Wagner, Sylvie Issanchou, Claire Chabanet, Luc Marlier, Benoist Schaal and Sandrine Monnery-Patris

1 comment

infant liking towards cheese

Posted by Sophie Frapolli, 03 September 2013 - 11:50 GMT

i just read your article via food navigator and wanted to share something i've observed within our family. I'm flavourist at Givaudan but this is not directly linked to my job, but maybe of interest for you: I've got two daughters, one loves strong cheeses, otherone not at all exactly as her father and grand father so i'm convinced this is related to genes. I could notice that when she was few months old starting to eat solid food, that Emmenthal was the only cheese she was accepting. Once i put some small pieces of Comté inside a tomato salad instead of Emmenthal, she immmediatly rejected. Just to add i am a cheese lover myself, and of course i gave same kind of food to both kids. Second child immediatly liked Roquefort , Camembert without any problem. For all other type of foods, they both eat more or less all kind, no huge differences and no other high disliking.
Other interesting point is Emmenthal in micro-wave developping this high butyric note that cheese lovers hate, she will love it.... so my opinion is that people liking strong sulphury notes do not like the strong fatty acids ones, and vise versa.
Have you already consider these type of factors in your study? i would be interested to know.