Prenatal Exposure to Vegetable Flavors May Shape Children’s Food Preferences

Pregnant participants received kale-powder or carrot-powder capsules; researchers then recorded infants’ facial responses to the matching odor before birth, at three weeks, and at three years.

The Guardian

In this pilot, twelve children were followed to age three, with earlier assessments at three weeks; exposure to a specific vegetable in utero linked to positive reactions to that vegetable’s smell and negative reactions to the other.

The Guardian

Lead author Prof Nadja Reissland (Durham) worked with Dr Beyza Ustun-Elayan (Cambridge), Dr Benoist Schaal (CNRS, France), and Dutch collaborators; funding came from an Aston University grant and the study appeared in *Developmental Psychobiology*.

The Guardian

If prenatal flavor exposure reliably shapes later food choices, it could offer a low-cost, culturally adaptable strategy to promote healthier eating and reduce diet-related disease.

The Guardian

Reissland noted that preference patterns persisted across developmental stages, indicating durable odor memory; Ustun-Elayan said the findings open new early-intervention pathways; Schaal highlighted fetal flavor detection as a factor in lifelong preferences.

The Guardian

Authors stress the small sample size and call for larger, diverse trials; practical issues include participant willingness to ingest concentrated powders and the funding needed for scale-up.

The Guardian

The study examined only kale and carrot and measured short-term odor responses; it provides no data on later dietary intake or on other flavor compounds.

The Guardian

• “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.” — Prof Nadja Reissland, Durham University

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• “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.” — Dr Beyza Ustun-Elayan, University of Cambridge

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• “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.” — Dr Benoist Schaal, CNRS (France)

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• “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.” — Prof Nadja Reissland, Durham University

The Guardian

Future work will test additional foods, enlarge cohorts, and track long-term intake, contingent on securing further funding.

The Guardian