News: Baby diet influences your food preferences

I usually prefer salty snacks over sweet ones, which new research suggests could have something to do with the type of food I ate as a baby. A study in the Journal of Public Health found eating foods with a high sugar or salt content could program infants to crave these tastes later in life.

For the study, researchers compared baby and toddler foods sold in Canada and found 63 percent of the products had either “high levels of sodium or an excessive proportion of calories coming from sugar.”

Gary Beauchamp, a biopsychologist and expert on chemosensory science, says the information collected from the study could be used to combat obesity. According to an article from Scientific American, the research suggests that by introducing healthful tastes and flavours to an infant’s diet, the child will develop a preference for similar foods which will carry into adulthood.

Dislike most vegetables now? It’s not too late to reprogram your own taste buds. While it’s easier to develop a taste preference in infancy, you can acquire tastes at any point in your life by slowing introducing new foods or drinks into your diet.

If you could reprogram your taste preferences, what would you include or eliminate from your diet?

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