BORN TO BE SWEET

Imagine a gooey chocolate layer cake. How about vanilla ice cream dripping with hot fudge? Maybe a bowl of sweet red strawberries topped with whipped cream?

Which would you choose for dessert – sweet carrot cake or bitter kale?

Where does taste come from? Dr. Ainsley Hawthorn, author, sensory scholar, and cultural historian wrote in Psychology Today, “new research shows fetuses smile or frown in response to different tastes.”

What? How can a preborn baby (fetus) taste anything?

Primitive taste buds appear early, in the 8^th week of pregnancy. Creative researchers have discovered taste responses in babies as young as 32-36 weeks in pregnancy or about 2 months before birth.

L. Paglia reported in NIH, The National Library of Medicine, that the “activation of taste buds starts during the 30th week of gestation when . . . the maternal diet may stimulate foetal [fetal] taste receptors.”

Creative researchers proved that a fetus develops taste and smell in the womb. In a study led by Beyza Ustun, Durham University Fetal and Neonatal Lab (UK) with Aston University, Birmingham UK, and the National Center for Scientific Research, University of Burgundy, France, facial expressions were used as “direct evidence.”

Here’s how they did it. About 100 Pregnant women, ages 18-40, participated in the study. At 32 and 36 weeks they were given a capsule of powdered carrots (sweet) or kale (bitter) to swallow. After 20 minutes, researchers took 4D ultrasound scans (videos of babies in the womb).

Fetuses exposed to sweet carrots showed what was called a “laughter-face” (smiling) expression. They liked it. Fetuses exposed to bitter kale showed a “cry-face” (disgusted) expression. They didn’t like it. Fetuses in the control group (no flavor) showed no expression.

It makes evolutionary sense. “Sweet” provides a source for glucose – key to growth and energy –  metabolic fuel for the brain. Bitter often indicates danger – bad or poisonous foods.

“Sweet” prepares a fetus for birth – breast milk that is both nutritious and sweet.

Gary K. Beauchamp wrote in the journal, Physiology & Behavior, that a “major role” of conscious taste is to help decide whether a food is safe to consume or whether it’s dangerous and should be rejected.

While infants reject bitter, adults have learned to discriminate, eating safe bitter foods like coffee and radishes and avoiding poisonous foods like Jerusalem cherries, raw cashews, and rhubarb leaves.

What’s a (pregnant) mother to do?

Perhaps repeated exposure to safe flavors before birth can help tastes after birth.  Hawthorn speculates that a flavor that has been experienced in utero might make a child less likely to reject it. Mom eats it and the taste goes to baby through amniotic fluid and baby is desensitized.

What happens beyond the womb?

Basic human tastes are generally categorized as bitter, sour, salty, sweet, and umami (savory).

Taste is a multisensory experience. Many experts believe that smell is responsible for as much as 75-80% of taste. Just consider how things taste when you have a heavy cold.

It also involves things like memory, experience, vision, and learning.

Remember the chocolate chip cookies your mother baked? Do you drool when you walk past a bakery making fresh bread? How about matzoh balls in homemade chicken soup?

They all trigger happy memories of tasty foods. Perhaps that’s why you love them.

You might be born sweet but taste becomes far more complex as you grow. Look at it this way. Would you eat sushi, chopped liver, or jiggling red jello if you didn’t know what it was?

Fortunately, taste and smell begin in the womb but grow and expand with you. Don’t be afraid to try new (safe) foods and discover novel spices, cuisines, and cooking styles.

It’s a gift from the womb.