[To which tastes are infants exposed during the first year of life?]

Abstract

Food consumption in young children is guided by their food preferences, which are partly determined by their attraction to the different tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami tastes). Early food experiences might modulate this attraction. Yet, no study has previously described the tastes of infant foods during the first year of life. This is the objective of the present study. The diet of 76 infants was recorded by their parents 1 week per month during the first year of life. This record provided an inventory of 2902 foods a priori different from a sensory point of view. The taste intensity of these foods was estimated. For each infant, each month, and each taste, a variable of exposure to the taste was calculated. Foods consumed by infants from 1 to 12 months of age generally had low or relatively moderate taste intensity. During the milk-feeding period, infants were mainly exposed to sweet taste; this exposure increased during the first year. Beginning with weaning, the exposure to sour taste rose sharply without becoming as high as the exposure to sweet taste, the exposures to salty and umami tastes rose modestly, and the exposure to bitter taste rose slightly, then stagnated. Consequently, the proportion of bitter taste was reduced to approximately half the other tastes between the age of 7 and 12 months. Taking these observations into account would be helpful in establishing feeding recommendations for the pediatric population.