Have you ever wondered why some people go crazy for garlic, kimchi, or blue cheese from the very cradle, while others grimace at the sight of them as if they’d been handed a lemon soaked in salt? We usually blame it on genetics or the classic excuse: “that’s how my parents raised me at the table.” But there is a third path — one that is much earlier, sneakier, and frankly, way more mind-blowing. It starts when you weighed half a kilo and were floating in total darkness.

Your Prenatal Flavor Playlist

When you were roughly the size of a mango, you weren’t just swallowing generic biological liquid. You were sipping a custom cocktail made from everything your mother had for lunch. Garlic? Check. Turmeric? Check. Chili peppers, dill, vanilla, and even the hops from non-alcoholic beer — all of it seeped through the placenta and flavored the liquid you gulped down. By the third trimester, you were drinking between 200 and 750 ml of this fluid every single day. You were literally swimming in the aromas of your mom’s kitchen.

This isn't a metaphor. The same volatile molecules that give saffron, anise, or curry their distinct scent easily cross the placental barrier into the amniotic fluid. The exact same process happens later with breast milk, where the taste can shift within hours of a meal. Consequently, the very first “dishes” you ever tasted in life came with her personal flavor signature long before you took your first bite of solid food.

The Experiment That Made Carrots Everyone’s Favorite Vegetable

In 2001, Dr. Julie Mennella from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia decided to test whether babies actually remember those prenatal tasting sessions. She designed a study to see if memories formed in the womb could dictate preferences at the dinner table.

She divided pregnant women into three distinct groups:

1. The Prenatal Group: Drank carrot juice every day during the last trimester and then water during breastfeeding.
2. The Postnatal Group: Drank water during pregnancy but drank carrot juice during breastfeeding (after birth).
3. The Control Group: Drank plain water the whole time.

When the babies were about 6 months old and ready for their first solid foods, everyone was offered two types of cereal: plain and carrot-flavored. Cameras recorded the babies’ micro-expressions, and mothers rated how much their little ones seemed to enjoy the meal. The results were so obvious you could see them without needing complex statistics:

• Babies who had “tasted” carrots either in the womb or in breast milk happily gobbled the carrot cereal. They showed fewer negative facial expressions, kept their mouths open more often, and accepted the spoon readily.
• Control-group babies wrinkled their noses, turned away, and clearly felt betrayed by the orange mush.
• Mothers from the first two groups noted: “My kid eats this carrot stuff like he’s known it his whole life.”

Why This Actually Works — The Psychological Explanation

This is a textbook example of “exposure learning in a safe context,” relying on two key psychological concepts: the Mere Exposure Effect and safety signaling.

The mechanism is elegant in its simplicity:

• You swallow an aromatic molecule.
• Your brain logs the data: “Flavor X = I’m alive, Mom’s alive, everything is safe.”
• This happens hundreds of times before you are even born, with zero negative consequences attached to the stimuli.

When you finally taste real carrots or garlic bread at 7 months old, your amygdala (the brain’s fear-and-danger center) doesn’t sound the alarm. Instead of triggering neophobia (the innate fear of new foods), your brain recognizes an old friend. It whispers: “Oh, I know this. This is safe.”

It is the exact same psychological reason we love songs we heard as kids, even if they are objectively terrible — except here, the “song” is the complex taste profile of borscht, curry, or kimchi.

What About People Who Hate Their Mom’s Signature Flavors?

Sometimes, the mechanism works in reverse. If a mother ate something that gave her severe heartburn or intense morning sickness (say, garlic) and she felt stressed, anxious, or nauseous while the flavor was present, the baby can theoretically link the two inputs. The equation becomes: “Garlic = Mom feels bad = I feel bad too.” The result can be a lifelong avoidance or aversion.

This mechanism explains how entire cultures establish their flavor codes. French babies whose mothers ate pungent cheese and garlic calmly consume Roquefort at age two. Japanese babies grow up predisposed to love the umami of seaweed and miso. American babies often gravitate toward sweet corn and peanut butter. It is not just “genes” — these children literally marinated in those tastes before their first tooth ever erupted.

The Takeaway

You are not only what you eat. You are what your mom ate while you weren’t even breathing air yet.

Next time you instinctively reach for that favorite comfort food — whether it’s salty herring soup, fiery tom yum, or grandma’s cherry pierogi — remember: you didn’t just “happen to love it.” You tried it for the first time when you were the size of an avocado, and your developing brain decided: “This tastes like home.”

Maybe give Mom a call and ask what she couldn’t get enough of during those nine months. Her answer might explain a lot about what ends up on your plate today.

References:

• Mennella, J. A., Jagnow, C. P., & Beauchamp, G. K. (2001). Prenatal and postnatal flavor learning by human infants. Pediatrics, 107(6), e88.