Rhiannon Lambert

So obviously, let's take this all with a pinch of salt, but they gave pregnant women either a kale powder capsule or a carrot powder capsule during the final.

Yeah, so interesting, because in pregnancy, it's really hard to have a variety of tastes.

As anybody will know, if you were like Ella and I, who both experienced beige all the way through, I think Ella did for one, I did for both pregnancies, it's very difficult.

So researchers tried a capsule approach, which again, give or take.

Researchers gave pregnant women either kale powder capsules or carrot powder capsules.

Now, remember, we discussed last week

The carrot juice, which was one of the original studies looking at taste preferences for the first 1,000 days of life.

And they introduced these capsules during the third trimester, so the final months of pregnancy.

And interestingly, they actually found that when they tracked these babies' reactions to these smells over several years first, and they did this, by the way, by looking at the facial expressions of babies.

So they analyzed their facial expressions in the womb, first of all, with ultrasound scans.

And then they repeated the testing when the babies were around three weeks old.

which is very early again.

And then they followed up at age three.

So at three weeks old, they're only having breast milk or formula milk.

And the findings were consistent, Ella.

So children who'd been exposed to carrot flavors in the womb reacted more positively to the smell of carrot later on and were more likely to grimace at kale.

Meanwhile, the children that had taken the kale capsules appeared much more accepting of the smell of kale.

And that's so interesting because kale is obviously such a bitter taste and it's

definitely not something that I think most toddlers love.

But I think it leads back to the research that I love on the veg first approach, which is how I weaned both of mine.