HERBSPHERE
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FOOD CHOICE STARTS IN THE WOMB
Being a parent has always been a weighty responsibility, covering a continuum to nurture the body, mind and spirit of the newborn child. When it comes to bodily care, looming large in the western world is the increasing threat of obesity in adults and children and its related diseases and incapacities.
Nobody knows precisely what ‘in particular’ may be a total cause of this unkindly phenomenon, but one thing is clear; it appears to have started with the advent of processed foods in the 1950s, plus other unwanted additives often used to colour or preserve such foodstuffs, that has been introduced into what was otherwise previously an organic diet.
To illustrate, the most recent ‘food scare’ concerning Sudan 1, a red dye that poses a carcinogenic risk (used for colouring solvents, oils, waxes, petrol, and shoe and floor polishes that officially is not allowed to be added to food in the UK and the rest of the EU), was present in hundreds of pre-prepared processed foods. Let us hope that for some mothers it sounded a ‘wake-up’ call to start cooking fresh food!
We know that since the early launch of TV dinners affordability and life-style seem to dictate a great deal of what a family eats. We also know that generally genetically humans evolve slowly, but genes are influenced by our ‘environment’ in the broadest sense too. ‘We are (or become) what we Eat’. Although not all research can yet be specific as to what causes obesity in the ‘environmental’ genetic sense, it doesn’t take a leap of the imagination to see that the UK population when on a wartime ‘rationing’ was a fit, lean and healthy nation, despite the obvious lack of some vitamins and minerals in foods at that time unobtainable which did in some cases have some long term affects upon health.
However, nothing that was deficient in the diet at that period seems to have caused anything like the poor standard of health of a wealthy nation as we are experiencing now. In fact, it is more than obvious that from the start of the Processed Foods era to the present Fast and Junk Food era, with the abandonment of organically grown foodstuffs ‘home-cooked’, marks a pattern of what has become deteriorations in the nation’s health. The much traveled, mainly Super-marketed, food itself doesn’t have the same nutritional value.
Yet parents who do make the effort to buy fresh foods and cook for their offspring have another huge and sometimes seemingly insurmountable problem i.e. getting their children to eat it!
There is an obvious answer to this difficulty: two generations of people have bodies that have gradually become accustomed to over-salted, over-sugared and over-fatted foods and their ‘taste’ – the nation’s ‘palate’ - has slowly but surely been altered.
So what can we do? It may seem unfair to propose that the onus to help retrieve the nation’s, and each individual’s ‘palate’ that is affected, to accommodate ‘healthy’ foodstuffs should rest on the female of the species. It is certainly no ‘blame game’ – almost without noticing, ‘stuff happens’ in our world and in our lives that are dictated by ‘market forces’ - but to achieve any radical change women could be the vehicle to take us a giant step of the way forward for mankind.
Four years ago, through research, we learned that ‘peanut allergy’, which affects an increasing number of children, could be engendered if: “the mother eats peanuts during pregnancy (perhaps exposing the infant to peanut allergen whilst in the womb) or if breast-feeding mothers eat peanuts (exposing infants to peanut allergen that is contained in breast milk). For this reason, it’s no surprise that many experts suggest that pregnant and nursing mothers avoid eating peanuts.” 1
Research may not rest easy upon the minds of some, but most of us can recall some weird and wonderful ‘tastes’ we have inherited from our gestation period whilst in the womb of our mothers’ we may call pregnancy food fads. For example, my mother was a tall slim lady who loved sweet sticky cakes etc., but went mad on lemons during pregnancy. Result: I loved lemons and raw lemon juice long before I knew there might be a link to her ‘pregnancy fad’. I’m a savoury foods protagonist by preference, like my father, and continued eating mushrooms and other savoury foods throughout pregnancy. I also liked to eat gherkins and blue cheese on crackers as a night-time snack and have always eaten a lot of fruits. Result: my daughter has a strong liking for savoury dishes and had a very sophisticated taste in food, even at the ‘pusher and spoon’ stage. She loves mushrooms and vinegary tastes, and still is an absolute ‘fruit-bat’! However, we don’t know where the penchant for ‘raw crudites’2 (without any ‘dip’) came from in early childhood, except from a partiality for strong tastes, so maybe that’s a further-flung genetically inherited taste.
What we do know is these ‘induced’ gestation period traits in taste are no longer a matter of hearsay or of fiction, but of fact, and can be instrumental in the gestation and breast-feeding periods for avoidance by dietary prevention of allergic diseases in infants and small children.3 In 2004, Italian researchers did an analysis review following statements of evidence as defined by the WHO (World Health Organization). Their results showed that “breast-feeding is highly recommended for all infants irrespective of atopic 4 heredity. … combined with avoidance of solid food and cow’s milk for at least 4-6 months is the most preventive regimen.” And, “in the absence of breast milk, formulas with documented reduced allergenicity for at least 4-6 months should be used.”3 The most recent research suggests that the maternal natural intake of vitamin C in the diet transferred to the infant by breast-feeding may reduce the risk of atopy (predisposition to allergies) in the infant.5 It had already been suggested in October of last year that breast-feeding reduces the risk of asthma during the first 4 years of life.6 This is good news to help avoid the traumas of allergies for mother and child.
Eating a balanced diet, irrespective of any ‘pregnancy food fads’, goes without saying as the best way to maintain a mother’s health in pregnancy and that of the unborn to newborn infant. There may also be other benefits that can be attributed to the changing content of a mother’s milk that an infant imbibes. For as long ago as 1975 it was suggested that the changes in composition of human milk during the feed are associated with development of an appetite-control mechanism in breast-fed babies. “If such a mechanism exists it would be destroyed by artificial feeds of constant concentration and flavour.” So once again the development of ‘taste’ or the plate emerges at a very early stage in life.7
Two decades later, research again suggested that the development of our ‘tastes’ for foods originates in both gestation and breast-feeding, ie. is dependent in formation upon what a woman eats and drinks in pregnancy and during lactation: first, because human milk is not a food of invariant flavour, it is flavoured by ingested compounds such as garlic, mint, vanilla, and provides the potential for a rich source of varying chemosensory8 experiences to the infant. And although “the infants’ response to a particular flavour in milk may depend upon the recency and duration of past exposures”, i.e. “the prior diet of mothers, and consequently their infants …”.9 In other words the scent and flavour of what a pregnant and breast-feeding woman eats and drinks has a profound influence on what kind of tastes their child may grow up to accept or reject.
So, unpalatable as it may seem – all puns intended – we are not only ‘what we eat’, but what our offspring are likely to eat and become. This hypothesis was further reinforced by earlier research that concluded: ‘Prenatal and early postnatal exposure to a flavour enhanced the infants’ enjoyment of that flavour in solid foods during weaning.” It goes a little further in that it is suggested that: “These very early flavour experiences may provide the foundation for cultural and ethnic differences in cuisine.”10 Well, no problem there, as in today’s multicultural UK both Chinese and Indian cuisine have been with us for many years. Unfortunately, ‘take-aways’ don’t always provide the best and most remedial ingredients of either. For example, cancer is well known to be far less prevalent in Japan where a fair amount of seaweed is eaten.11 It has been suggested that breast cancer may be prevented by the Japanese habit of eating seaweeds. More recently ‘mekabu’12 [Wakame], which is widely consumed as a safe inexpensive food looks to be a possible preventive for human breast cancer.13Seaweed eating is not as foreign as it sounds, various dried varieties of seaweeds can be bought at larger Supermarkets and from Health Food shops. Indeed, the British Celtic communities have always eaten seaweeds; Carrageen moss (Chondrus crispus) in Ireland, making soup and junket for convalescents; Sea Lettuce (Ulva lactuca) as a salad vegetable or in soups; common Bladder-wrack (Fuscus vesiculosis) and Dulse (Palmaria palmata) in Scotland, and laver bread (Porphyra umbilicalis) in as a traditional breakfast in Wales. There are many recipes and books on the subject.14What becomes clear is that if we as a nation want to change the ‘tastes’ and palates of future generations for them to choose to eat more healthfully and to avoid a predilection for Fast and Junk Foods, the female population, even perhaps at the decision-making point for pregnancy before conception, could chew on what they are going to eat to re-establish an less adulterated future palate in their child and thereby influence the eating habits of the people, because it would appear that food choice really does start in the womb.
It may seem a very forward thinking tough decision to make for the present child-bearing female generation, but it is surely better than having to cope with children’s allergies or having an on-going fight to make their children eat a better choice of foods.
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