When Babies Develop Taste Buds and Start Tasting Food

Hoping you don’t end up with a picky eater? Even though your baby won’t be chowing down on solid foods for at least four months, it’s never too soon to start exposing him to a variety of tastes. 

In fact, your baby’s sense of taste starts developing early in pregnancy. He tastes a version of what you taste — and research has shown that the foods you consume during this time may help shape what your baby will enjoy eating, even years later.

Do babies have taste buds? 

Yes, during the first two months of pregnancy, taste buds begin forming where your baby’s tongue will be. These clusters of receptors will eventually recognize taste sensations like sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami. At the same time, neurons (i.e. nerve cells) are beginning to connect your baby’s growing brain to different areas of the body, including your baby’s mouth. 

By week 8 of pregnancy, neurons from the brain will have connected with the developing taste buds. But your baby can’t quite taste the surrounding amniotic fluid yet: He still needs taste pores, or small openings on the surface of the tongue that allow the flavor compounds from food to come in contact with the taste receptors that line the taste buds.

By around week 16, these taste pores will have developed. By now, your baby will also have started swallowing amniotic fluid. As the fluid flows across his tongue on the way to his digestive system, molecules in the fluid will interact with the taste buds, and your baby will experience his first taste: salty amniotic fluid. 

The amount of amniotic fluid he swallows — and the number of tastes he has exposure to — will keep increasing through the second and third trimesters. By week 21, he’ll be swallowing several ounces a day.

When can babies taste food?

When your baby starts tasting amniotic fluid around week 16, he’ll also start “tasting” some of the foods you eat. Even though your digestive system is separate from your baby’s, molecules from your meals make their way into your amniotic fluid. It's not only vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins, but also some of the molecules that give foods their particular tastes. 

The flavors your baby tastes inside the womb, though, won’t be quite as strong or distinct as those you taste. That’s because much of what you think of as the flavor of a food is actually its smell, which is transmitted to your nose through the air. 

Since your baby is surrounded by amniotic fluid, he only tastes molecules from your bloodstream and doesn’t have the sense of smell yet to amplify those flavors. But even with this blunted sense of taste, your baby will start to recognize foods.

What causes a picky eater?

The foods you eat during pregnancy may influence the foods that your baby will like for years to come. Giving the babies prenatal or early postnatal exposure (via breastfeeding) to carrot juice enhanced their enjoyment of that flavor, one study found.

Some scientists say that the foods you eat during pregnancy could shape your baby’s eating habits — and his odds of obesity and diabetes — throughout the rest of his life.

So what flavors should you expose your baby to during pregnancy? Aim to eat a balanced and varied diet, and choose fresh fruits and vegetables over processed snacks.