[witch_power]

What do you think? Is it important?

NEWS: Flavored Infant Formula

Proponents of baby-lead weaning claim that breastfed babies take to solid food faster because they've been exposed to second hand flavors. This seems to be mostly based on experience, but there is experimental support: Mennella, Jagnow, and Beauchamp (2001)found babies liked carrot-flavored cereal more if their mothers drank carrot juice during pregnancy ("CW") or lactation ("WC").

This suggests to me that we should be flavoring baby formula to match the variation in flavor found in breast milk.

SOURCE: http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-02-21.html

[witch_power]

What do you think? Is it important?

NEWS: Flavored Infant Formula

Proponents of baby-lead weaning claim that breastfed babies take to solid food faster because they've been exposed to second hand flavors. This seems to be mostly based on experience, but there is experimental support: Mennella, Jagnow, and Beauchamp (2001)found babies liked carrot-flavored cereal more if their mothers drank carrot juice during pregnancy ("CW") or lactation ("WC").

This suggests to me that we should be flavoring baby formula to match the variation in flavor found in breast milk.

SOURCE: http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-02-21.html

[teresagem]

I wonder though, if it would need to be a whole lot of different flavours added at random times in small amounts, otherwise it would still not achieve the ever-varying flavours present in breastmilk.

eg if a baby had carrot flavoured or broccoli flavoured breastmilk all of the time, then that baby may well grow up liking those flavours, but could still baulk at other good foods such as onion or capsicum.

Can you imagine a mother who is formula feeding also buying a whole host of very small amounts of prepackaged flavours to add to the bottles? It would likely be a costly exercise delivered in this fashion, and I think nearly all parents would decide that it was not worth it, when their baby was still growing on formula.

How much actual research is their on this topic and later food preferences and refusals in children I wonder?

Anecdotally, what did other parents find? My three children all seem to be happy to eat a huge variety of foods even as toddlers. They did not baulk at different flavours or trying new things. I recall on of their cousins who was combo fed (mostly formula for a couple of months), and then FF. When we would have a family get together and ate pizzza, she would pull every last bit of topping off the pizza and just eat the base. It seemed odd to me at the time, but perhaps this is why.

Teresa

[witch_power]

I am a very bland, basic eater - I don't like a lot of spices, strong flavours or a lot of vegetables.

Jason, who was FF - would eat anything, and he loved caulifllower, brussel sprouts, cabbage, broccoli - all foods I refused to eat, but his dad liked. I can't think of anything Jason would not eat - oh, eggs, he has never lilked eggs.

Michael refused to eat anything till he was 9.5 months old, and then he flatly refused any sort of baby/strained food. His first solid food was a piece of steak that he gummed to death! LOL He loved liver and onions, raw onions and lemons. But as he got older, he refused vegetables - all kinds.

Josh didn't refuse anything at first, at 5 months he was trying to steal my food at every meal. But then, as he started eating and then reacting to foods, he got very picky about what he was willing to eat. He knew just by the smell if he was allergic. But he tried foods from around the world, many foods I had never heard of before.

[nisupulla]

>>Can you imagine a mother who is formula feeding also buying a whole host of very small amounts of prepackaged flavours to add to the bottles? It would likely be a costly exercise delivered in this fashion,<<

That's more or less what I was thinking. Somehow the formula industry would exploit the vegetable flavoring in order to sell more formula.

Of course, I've said for a while now that the formula industry would dye the formula green, if they thought they could sell more.They'd use a GRAS dye, of course.

>>and I think nearly all parents would decide that it was not worth it, <<

I don't know. Somehow the message that formula is not as good as breastfeeding seems to have some parents committed to buying formula that is touted as "more like breastmilk". Formula flavored with vegetables would be "more like breastmilk" in theory, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if people buy it.

Afterall, they buy the DHA/AA formula and they often buy Enfamil or Similac instead of no name brand, even though all formulas are required to have all the same active ingredients. Just saying.

[teresagem]

Oh I can see that if a generic vegetable flavour was added prior to sale, it could well be used as a marketing tactic. What would not be worth it would be buying loads of tiny prepackaged flavouring capsules, with different ones to be added at different times. This could be an expensive exercise. But I guess you are right about the cost probably not bothering people. If you believe formula is pretty much equivalent, or OTOH, you see formula as the normal way to feed a baby, and you are accepting of those costs as part of baby-rearing, then one more extra cost would not seem much more. Especially if it was touted along the lines of 'now even close to breastmilk' or giving your baby some other advantage (like DHA). I was thinking of myself and I would have baulked at the cost of formula.

Teresa