Developing Healthy Tastes In Your Baby-to-Be
In this Article
Your baby’s sense of taste begins from first trimester itself. This is a wonderful opportunity for the mother-to-be to instill healthy eating habits in the baby from the start!
Every mother wants her baby to eat healthy foods. The popular myth of taste buds developing only after 3-4 years is not true. Your baby tastes and smells everything in the womb itself! So it’s of prime importance for the mother to eat healthy food during pregnancy so that the baby also inherits those traits in the womb.
What Happens in the Womb?
The most surprising fact is that your baby’s taste development starts from eight weeks after conception. The development of sensory organs is closely related to the formation of the central nervous system that happens at an early stage of gestation. By the end of the third trimester, your baby’s sense of taste is completely formed. The development of taste buds is primarily through the amniotic fluid.
The baby gets all the nutrition from the mother through the umbilical cord, but the baby can also swallow the amniotic fluid, which carries the distinctive flavors of whatever the mother eats. The first taste that a baby experiences is the salty amniotic fluid. The amniotic fluid is responsible for stimulating the taste receptors immediately after swallowing. Depending upon the stage of pregnancy, the fetus swallows 200-800 ml of amniotic liquid. The baby remembers the flavors in amniotic fluid and shows a liking to those tastes after birth.
What is Nutritional Intelligence?
Doctors all around the world have agreed to the fact that pre-birth phase of a baby is crucial and responsible for the development of nutritional intelligence. Nutritional intelligence is all about developing a baby’s taste buds in an intelligent way so that they opt for healthy foods later in their life. This also explains the reason for adopted children preferring their native cuisine more than their usual cuisine. The pre-birth phase is an excellent opportunity for the mother to inculcate tasty and healthy eating habits in the baby. Breast milk also carries the different flavors and helps in further development of taste buds.
So start eating everything you want your baby to love. Try different flavors of food and have a balanced diet consisting of fruits, vegetables, milk products, eggs, whole grains, meat, etc. Eat your favorite delicacies and your child will also love those after birth. Acceptance of new food after birth takes time, so it’s always best to introduce all kinds of food in-utero so that it becomes easier after delivery. A major portion of protein requirements of the baby comes through what the mother drinks. Drink healthy fruits and vegetable juices so that your baby gets solid nutrition as well as healthy taste buds!
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