Breastfeeding Moms Shouldn't Make Chicken Like My Mom...

My husband has a running joke about my mother's cooking. He says her secret recipe is to "take chicken out of package, put directly in oven, take out of oven. Serve." Sorry, mom. It's the only way I can impart to my readers how important it is to eat food with a lot of flavor. Awesome new research just emerged showing that flavors in food are detected in breast milk within minutes of consumption, lasting up to 8 hours. Breastfeeding moms who eat a variety of exciting foods have babies with a much more varied palate when they begin solids.

At the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, a group of 18 breastfeeding women were asked to give samples of their breast milk before and after eating capsules of various flavors (banana, licorice, mint and caraway seed.) New Scientist magazine reported last week that the caraway seed and licorice peaked two hours after the mother ate them, but the banana was detected in the milk only during the first hour after consumption. The study, which was originally published in the journal Physiology And Behaviour, found that mint was present at stable levels between two and eight hours after consumption and all four flavors had disappeared from the breast milk by the eight-hour mark.

So go ahead and eat funky, cool, thrilling food. Your baby will love it and you won't have to make a completely separate meal for her once she can sit at the family table.