Sense of Taste in Baby - What Babies like to Eat

Sense of Taste in a Baby

Babies explore at most things by putting them inside their mouths. While they naturally prefer breast milk or formulas that are sweet in taste, they try to put any and every thing in their mouth to feel it and get a sense of taste of it. It can become an important safety net in babies, as they spit out anything that does not taste good almost immediately. It is good, especially, when they accidentally put a slug in their mouth or other things like that. But, it can also become a safety hazard, if the infant swallows any small things she finds such as buttons and coins. As parents, you need to make sure that you do not put things that your little adventurer swallows.

There are only four different types of taste that infants need to develop - sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Talking about taste, it is mostly seen that infants have a liking for sweet food items and dislike items that have a sour taste. This may be because right from the time a child is born, he/she is fed breast milk or formulas that are sweet in taste. Slowly, kids develop a sense of taste. This may be one of the prime reasons that it is difficult to develop a taste for vegetables such as broccoli and tomatoes. To know more about the sense of taste in an infant, check out the following lines.

Development Of Taste in Infants

The sense of taste develops at a prenatal stage for infants. At the 7 to 8 weeks' gestation, taste buds start emerging.

After birth, infants show a preference for sweet tastes. A combination of sugar with a pacifier has a calming effect on newborns.

Infants do not like things that have a sour flavor to it. Items that have a sour taste raise a frown on the face of the kid.

Salty food is neutral and has no effect on infants. They neither have a calming effect nor raise a frown on the face of the tot. It is only after 4 months of age that kids start developing a taste for salty food.

It may take as many as 20 trials, to develop a taste for a particular thing in a baby. So you may need time and patience to change the taste preferences of your baby and make her eat any new foods.

The texture of the food also plays a pivotal role in developing the taste. Most of the babies do not like cottage cheese, because of its odd texture.

The odor of volatile flavors like cherry, are perceived via the olfactory receptors. This type of odor does not have much impact on children, until they reach the age 5.