Kids Dish

And that face that babies can make the first time they taste a new food? Don’t focus on it, Mennella suggested. “Even though they make these grimaces, when you offered the spoon again, the baby kept on eating,” she said of her tiny study participants.

That grimace, she suspects, is innate and not a sign the baby hates the food and won’t try it again.

For the study, Mennella and her co-author wanted to focus on how babies develop preferences for foods. They observed 45 infants, ranging in age from 4 months to 8 months, who had all been weaned to cereal but had very little experience eating fruits and vegetables. None had eaten green beans and only one had tried peaches, which were the two foods studied.

The infants were divided into two groups: One group got green beans at home for eight consecutive days, while the other got green beans and then peaches at home over the same eight days. The infants were also observed for acceptance of the foods for two days before the home test and two days afterward, at the Monell center.

The researchers also measured how much the babies ate and asked the mothers about their own eating habits during pregnancy and afterward. Twenty of the 45 new mothers were breast-feeding.

During the initial exposure, the babies ate more calories from peaches than green beans — about 200 calories compared to just 74. And as they ate, most squinted, furrowed their brow or curled their upper lip.

“When we looked at the first time these babies ate green beans and peaches, the breast-fed babies ate more of the peaches [than the formula-fed infants] and made less negative faces when they ate them,” Mennella said.

Then the researchers looked at the diet records of the mothers. “These lactating mothers ate more fruits in general,” Mennella said. “The most likely reason why the breast-fed babies ate more peaches is, they were already familiar with the flavor.”

No differences in green bean preferences were found between infants who were breast-fed or bottle-fed. When Mennella looked at the diet report, she found both formula-feeding and breast-feeding mothers ate fewer green beans than recommended.

After the eight days of initial testing, all the babies ate more green beans. The green bean consumption rose from about 2 ounces per serving to more than 3 ounces.

Why didn’t peach consumption rise? “They ate the peaches after the green beans,” she said. “So they were full.”

So breast-feeding does boost the chance a baby will like a first taste of food, but only if mother ate similar-tasting foods, Mennella said.