Taste Development in the Fetus and Newborn: A Complete Guide
Introduction
Understandably, there is a lot of curiosity among expectant mothers and new mothers about the development of taste in the fetus and newborn .
If you are looking for information on this important and fascinating topic, in the next lines of this article you can find several useful specifications.
As you can see, I have inserted an index. Thanks to it, you will be able to, if you wish, delve deeper into the aspects that interest you most.
Are you passionate about a particular angle of the topic? Just click on the dedicated paragraph and read.
Now all that's left for me to do is get into the heart of the action, as I like to say in my videos.
Follow me in the next lines to discover the details of a fundamental topic for the well-being of your puppy.
Your guide will be the precious advice of Doctor Federica Dell'Oro, the nutrition biologist of the Dr-Silva.com team (and author of some fantastic video courses that you can find in the dedicated section of the site ).
Can the fetus perceive the flavors of the foods the mother eats during pregnancy?
The answer to the question that gives the title to the paragraph you are starting to read is yes .
As Dr. Federica Dell'Oro, author of the video course on nutrition during pregnancy and breastfeeding that you can find at the end of this paragraph, reminds us in this video , this is the reason why, if what you bring to the table is healthy and safe, you can eat practically everything during pregnancy .
For the very reason mentioned above, it is a good idea to make an effort to follow as varied a diet as possible.
This way, the puppy can experience a very wide range of flavors.
At the beginning, the starting point is the ingestion of amniotic fluid.
With birth , however, the invaluable role of mother's milk comes into play.
The journey of discovery of tastes by the puppy during pregnancy first and during breastfeeding then represents, as revealed in recent years by numerous studies, an important basis for building a balanced approach to nutrition during childhood and even after.
I also remember that the variety of the mother's diet during pregnancy and during the possible breastfeeding journey allows, once complementary feeding has begun, to offer many more foods to the child.
Why? The reason is very simple: due to the aspects I mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is as if the little one had undergone a real training to discover flavors that are very different from each other.
The developmental path of taste in the fetus
Intrauterine life is a journey of fascination and mystery. Over the years, science has managed to provide several references on its peculiarities.
It has been discovered, for example, that the taste buds and other organs responsible for the perception of tastes begin to function as early as the second trimester of gestation .
Let's take a step back in the weeks of pregnancy, remembering that, more or less around the ninth, the embryo can be considered multireceptive.
Between the eighth and thirteenth week, the so-called taste buds appear.
What are they? They are organelles responsible for the perception of taste located in correspondence with the squamous epithelium that covers the very first portions of the alimentary canals.
When the pregnancy journey reaches the twelfth week , the fetus begins to swallow.
This is a very important step. Why? Because, thanks to the aromatic compounds present in the amniotic fluid, the stimulation of the aforementioned taste buds occurs.
Following this stimulation, information is transmitted to the brainstem, resulting in the induction of salivation and tongue movements.
Let's jump forward to a period near the end of gestation, that is, the thirtieth week.
This is a moment that sees the materialization of another wonder.
Which one exactly? The beginning of the fetus' ability to recognize changes in flavors that it comes into contact with through the amniotic fluid.
This means, in concrete terms, that from the gestational age indicated above the puppy is able to fully appreciate the variety of flavours that characterise the mother's diet.
The stages of taste development in the fetus obviously do not end here! Around the thirty-second week, in fact, the puppy is able to react to the changes in flavor that characterize the amniotic fluid.
How does it do this? Through changes in the frequency of swallowing.
Depending on whether the taste he feels is sweet or bitter, the little one increases or decreases it.
It is essential to point out that the flavorful substances found in amniotic fluid - the list includes glucose but also urea, the compound that allows our body to eliminate excess nitrogen - are crucial to the development of the fetus' and future child's taste system.