Are Our Tastes in Food Shaped Even Before We Are Born?
A recent experiment suggests that prenatal exposure to food tastes and smells could impact diet preferences later in life, with health consequencesRecent research may shed some light: Researchers in Britain and France just published the first direct evidence showing that fetuses can actually taste and smell while still in the womb. These important findings could help scientists further our understanding of how human taste and smell receptors develop. But the most immediate implication is that a pregnant woman’s diet might influence their babies’ food preferences after birth. “A number of studies have suggested that babies can taste and smell in the womb, but they are based on post-birth outcomes while our study is the first to see these reactions prior to birth,” lead researcher Beyza Ustun, a postgraduate researcher in the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab at Durham University, said in…
