Breast Milk Provides Menu of Different Flavours

Human milk provides a veritable cornucopia of different flavour combinations that may prime a child to try new foods later on.

To get a handle on how flavours from a mother's diet get transferred into her milk, Helene Hausner and her colleagues at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark asked 18 lactating mothers to provide a sample of breast milk before they ate capsules containing the same compounds that give caraway seed, menthol, banana and liquorice their flavour, and then at regular intervals afterwards.

They found that different flavours take varying amounts of time to appear in breast milk. While concentrations of the caraway and liquorice compounds peaked 2 hours after the mother ate them, the banana compound could only be detected in the milk during the first hour after consumption. Menthol was present at relatively stable levels for between 2 and 8 hours after consumption.

The findings could have practical implications for mothers worried about why their infant is refusing to feed.

Preliminary results from Hausner also suggest that breastfed infants might be more receptive to new flavours than bottle-fed ones.