Favourite Foods Determined by Mother's Milk

Scientists have found that children's food preferences depend on the flavours passed to them through their mothers milk.

Dr. Beauchamp of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in philadelphia, found that children who had been fed savoury milk preferred savoury tastes, where as those with sweet milk preferred sweeter tastes.

The critical time in which babies learnt this preference was at the age of two to five months. It is believed that if mothers eat healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables at this critical time, babies can be primed to like it later in life. Mothers are therefore to be advised to increase consumption of healthy products during this time.

This means that babies who are fed formula milk instead of breast milk do not get this priming, and do not get the varied sensory stimuli that they would be exposed to with breast milk.

To find out more:

Paper: Beauchamp, G. et al. (2009) Early milk feeding influences taste acceptance and liking during infancy. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Article: Flavours in mothers milk may determine the foods children like, Telegraph.

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Glass half full genetics

Scientists at the University of Michigan have discovered that people optimistic or pessimistic outlook to life is genetic, and depends on levels of just one molecule: Neuropeptide Y.

They found that if you have lower levels of NPY, you are likely to be more pessimistic than those with higher levels. This in turn means that people with lower NPY are more likely to have depression and react badly to stressful situations.

The scientists made this finding by scanning peoples brains while showing them neutral and emotionally charged photos. Those with high NPY had a stronger emotional response to the photos than those with lower levels. This means that people may be diagnosed earlier with psychiatric conditions such as depression.

To find out more:

Original paper: Mickey et al (2011) Emotion processing, Archives of General Psychiatry.

Articles: Born miserable - some people genetically programmed to be negative, Telegraph