Correction Appended


On the other hand, the researchers also found that mothers could get the same head start on building a healthy palate by breast-feeding and drinking carrot juice.

In a study, 46 women in their third trimester who planned to breast-feed were assigned either to drink carrot juice during pregnancy and water after giving birth, water during pregnancy and carrot juice afterward, or water throughout.

About a month after the babies began to eat solid food, they were given two bowls of cereal, one mixed with carrot juice and one with water. The amount of each cereal they ate (and for how long) was recorded, and mothers filled out surveys about which food they thought their babies enjoyed more. The babies who had tasted the flavor of carrots before, whether through the umbilical cord or in their mothers' milk, had more positive reactions to it than babies tasting it for the first time, according to the analysis of facial expressions and to the mothers' survey.

''We suggest that prenatal and early postnatal exposure predisposes the young infant to favorably respond to the now-familiar flavor,'' the researchers said, suggesting that the phenomenon could help explain how culture-specific flavor preferences are established early in life.

Drawing (Stuart Goldenberg)