Mother's eating habits affect foetus

Your eating habits influence your baby

Be it junk or healthy food - what you eat during pregnancy affects your child's food preferences as it helps to form their sense of smell, so says a new study.

A research team from the University of Colorado said a pregnant mother's diet sensitises her foetus to those particular smells and flavours and even shapes their brain development.

This makes the mother's diet more attractive to the child when they are older.

The study author, Josephine Todrank, now at the University of Haifa in Israel, said: "If the mother drinks alcohol, her child may be more attracted to alcohol because the developing foetus 'expects' that whatever comes from the mother must be safe."

"If she eats healthy food, the child will prefer healthy food," added Todrank. Researchers studying mice found that the pups' sense of smell was changed by what their mothers ate, teaching them to like the flavours in her diet.

Daily Mail