So you think you know why you crave chocolate? Or sushi? Or pineapple? Well a new study had found that what a woman eats during her pregnancy shapes the baby’s food preferences later in life. A baby is surrounded and nourished on the amniotic fluid, which is filled with the flavors of what the mom has eaten. The babies are feasting on the flavored amniotic fluid, forming memories of these flavors even before birth. These memories result in preferences for these foods for a lifetime.
Julie Mennella, a researcher at The Monell Chemical Senses Center explains:
“Things like vanilla, carrot, garlic, anise, mint — these are some of the flavors that have been shown to be transmitted to amniotic fluid or mother’s milk. For example, eating broccoli while pregnant means there’s a better chance your baby will like broccoli more than another baby would, whose mother did not eat broccoli.”
In addition, new findings may lend insight into why some people are especially sensitive to bitter tastes. Scientists from the Monell Center and Givaudan Flavors have identified a protein inside of taste cells that acts to shorten bitter taste signals.
Mice lacking the gene for this taste terminator protein are more sensitive to bitter taste and also find it more aversive, possibly because they experience the taste for a longer period of time.
When you drink tonic water for example, quinine molecules activate or turn on your taste receptor cells. The activated cells then send messages to tell your brain that the tonic is bitter. The mechanisms that turn on taste cells are fairly well understood, at least for sweet, umami and bitter tastes. The researchers wanted to know what turns those taste cells “off.” Little was known in past research about what causes the taste cell to stop sending that message.
Researchers used multiple approaches to identify a protein called Serca3 and demonstrate that it plays an important role in turning off the bitter taste signal.
To demonstrate how Serca3 influences taste, the researchers went on to show that mice bred to lack the Serca3 gene were more sensitive to bitter taste and also found it more unpleasant. This response was primarily related to bitter taste. However, mice without Serca3 also responded to sweet and umami tastes as being slightly more intense as compared to the responses of normal mice. There were no changes for salty and sour tastes.
The Serca3 protein functions as a calcium pump. It helps to terminate bitter taste signals by removing calcium from the cell, which then causes the cell to stop signaling.
However, there may be another member of the Serca family may work in a similar way to terminate taste sensations in sweet and umami cells. Future studies will investigate the contribution of this component, Serca2, in regulating sweet and umami taste perception.
Very early exposure to flavors, before and after birth, and reinforcement of those flavors make it more likely that children will accept a wide variety of flavors.
This helps to explain why kids from countries with more adventurous menus enjoy more diverse foods than a child exposed to American peanut butter and jelly and chicken nuggets.
The bottom line is that you are what you eat, or what your mom ate.
Written by Sy Kraft