My kids love black olives, mustard, and lemons. Weird, right? Not to me.
See, I always suspected this may have something to do with the salty, sour, and spicy foods I craved while I was pregnant with each of them. But I’d never heard of any science to back that up – until now.
I recently read about some studies that showed babies’ taste preferences can be affected for life by what their mother did or didn’t consume while pregnant.
Babies of moms who suffered from extreme morning sickness seemed to crave salt more than other babies, because they were dehydrated in the womb. Babies of moms who consumed lots of carrot juice while pregnant showed a strong preference for carrot-flavored cereal, while babies who weren’t exposed to carrots could take it or leave it. It’s all making sense now…
I remember early in my first pregnancy, I was still in that stage of feeling exhausted and nauseous most of the time. But one day, I was propelled off the couch with a sudden urgency to make… spinach dip. From that day on, I probably tried half a dozen recipes. I couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Interestingly, I am a vegetarian, so craving iron-rich foods like leafy greens makes total sense.
I don’t have a good explanation for the cinnamon candies, though. I was obsessed with those red hot hard candies, for some reason. I would buy them by the bagful at the drugstore. And I also drank a LOT of lemonade. And then there were the sour cream and onion potato chips…
The funny thing is, when I was pregnant I didn’t think I had any crazy cravings. When people would ask me I’d laugh, “Oh, you mean like pickles and ice cream? Nah.” Apparently I didn’t think that my consuming vats of spinach dip, red hots, and lemonade was out of the ordinary.
And I still can’t explain why my kids won’t touch spinach.
Did you have any weird pregnancy cravings?
