Taste for Healthful Foods Starts in Womb

Mothers can give their kids a leg up on health from the womb to the tomb by giving them a taste for nutritious alkaline but kid-hated foods like spinach and broccoli before they are even born! The only thing moms have to do is eat such alkaline foods themselves during pregnancy, or barring that, eat them while breast-feeding, according to the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

"Flavors from the mother's diet are transmitted through amniotic fluid and mother's milk," said Julie Mennella, a researcher at the Monell center. "A baby learns to like a food's taste when the mother eats that food on a regular basis."

Experiments showed, for instance, that when pregnant women drank carrot juice, their babies liked carrots better than the babies of mothers who had not. In another test, babies who were still breast-feeding but also eating solids at first rejected green beans until their mothers began eating them and transmitting the flavor of the beans in their milk.

"Babies are born with a dislike for bitter tastes," said Menella. "If mothers want their babies to learn to like to eat vegetables, especially green vegetables, they need to provide them with opportunities to taste these foods."

Dr. Robert O. Young of the pH Miracle Living Center suggest, "drinking fresh vegetable juice or green drinks everyday while pregnant or while nursing will build healthy blood for the Mother and the unborn or nursing baby."

"When the Mothers blood is healthy then the baby's blood will be healthy and healthy blood means a healthy and strong baby."

Dr. Young states, "a pregnant or nursing mom should be drinking at least 3 to 4 liters of fresh green vegetable juice or powdered alkaline green drink every day to secure her health and the health and strength of her baby. There is no better way!"