Researchers from Durham University in the UK postulate that unborn babies may exhibit different reactions depending on what their mothers eat.
According to Sky News, the researchers performed 4D ultrasounds of pregnant women at 32 and 36 weeks, shortly after said women ingested tablets containing carrot or kale powder.
The images procured in the process appear to show that babies whose mothers took the carrot pill made “smiling faces,” while babies whose mothers took kale pills made “crying faces,” with the infants apparently being able to taste the food by inhaling or swallowing amniotic fluid in the womb, the media outlet notes.
"It was really amazing to see unborn babies' reaction to kale or carrot flavours during the scans and share those moments with their parents," postgraduate researcher and study lead Beyza Ustun said.
Research co-author Professor Jackie Blissett from Aston University also toyed with the possibility that “repeated prenatal flavour exposures may lead to preferences for those flavours experienced postnatally.”
"In other words, exposing the foetus to less 'liked' flavours, such as kale, might mean they get used to those flavours in utero,” Blissett elaborated. "The next step is to examine whether foetuses show less 'negative' responses to these flavours over time, resulting in greater acceptance of those flavours when babies first taste them outside of the womb."