The craving for strange flavor combinations of food
is a well-known stereotype of one of the behaviors of pregnant women and is
always good for a smile in a movie. However, flavors from foods are perhaps the
most important factor in our ongoing choice of diet. We can work hard to focus
on a healthy diet, but sooner or later we start to crave the monosodium
glutamate enhanced flavor of some junk food or other.
It’s not even that a particular flavor is
automatically universally liked that governs our craving, but just ones that we
have learned from an early age. We may think that it was the free toy that got
us started, but it probably goes back even further. How far? Back to the
perinatal stage in some cases. What our moms were eating before and after we
were born is part of our flavor heritage.
When we were weaned, our diet changed dramatically
and very often for quite bland foods.
Many of us screamed, threw stuff about and got generally bent out of
shape by the whole process.
Do animals have the same problems? Oostindjer et al from Wageningen U have had a look
at pigs and fed some sows on a diet flavored with trans-anethol with others on a
control diet (1).
Anethol gives a strong anise flavor. It is
responsible for the flavor in absinthe and its solubility behavior produces the
cloudy appearance when water is added. It also works well as a mosquito
repellant which may have been good for the pigs. Note: no absinthe was drunk by
the pigs.
Once the piglets were ready to become weaners, they
were grouped in pens which had flavored food, just anise smelling air but normal
food, or the control food and air. The piglets that had the most fun, playing
and getting on with their pen-pals, were those who had the anise flavored air.
Having flavor in the food didn’t do that much for them. Just the smell made
them happy as Larry. Having just plain old, plain old food and air resulted in
a manipulative bunch of squealers.
I guess the message that we can take away is that
we need to choose our flavors early but wisely. Living with lots of garlic odor
might be a hard choice just to get to happy mealtimes when weaning our kids.
