A team of Danish researchers recently found that what a breastfeeding mother eats ha quite an instant effect on the taste of the breastmilk. It was also found that this taste actually affects her baby's food preferences.
Since the nursing baby's first contact with different flavors will be through the variation of mom's milk, the research team believes that this may very well explain why some babies prefer or refuses to eat certain foods.
The study was carried out with a group of 18 breastfeeding moms, who were asked to consume certain capsules with various flavorings, such as caraway seed, liquorice, menthol, and banana.
After that, samples of their milk were analyzed after 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours. This showed that the flavors did reach the milk almost immediately after the woman consumed it. The different flavors then stayed in the milk for various amounts of time. For example both caraway seed and licorice flavor stayed for over two hours, while banana was gone after one hour. All different flavor compounds were gone after 8 hours.