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.

Bacteria Choose Fruit Flies Mates

A type of bacteria found in fruit flies has been found to influence mate choice by changing the pheromones produced by the fly.

Researchers found that changing the flies diets, changed the types of bacteria found in the body of the flies, which in turn changed their mating preference.

To test that the preferences were due to bacteria rather than the flies themselves, the researchers fed the flies antibiotics to kill off the bacteria. When the bacteria was absent the flies were seen to mate randomly, confirming the role of the bacteria in the mating preferences.

The researchers are now extending their study to see whether the bacteria affect choice by changing pheromones, or by some other method.

To find out more:

Original Paper: Sharon et al (2010), Commensal bacteria play a role in mating preference of Drosophila melanogaster. PNAS

Articles: ScienceMag - Bacteria help flies select mates