Babies may develop taste for salt via food

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Infants who eat breakfast cereal, bread and crackers show a greater preference for salt than infants who don't eat such food, U.S. researchers found.

Lead author Leslie J. Stein, a physiological psychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said salt preference of 61 infants was tested at ages 2 months and again at 6 months.

At each age, infants were allowed to drink from three bottles for 2 minutes each -- one bottle contained water, another contained a moderate concentration of salt, at 1 percent or the saltiness of commercial chicken noodle soup, and the third bottle had a higher concentration of salt at 2 percent, which tastes extremely salty to adults.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found the 2-month-old infants were either indifferent to the 1 percent solution or rejected the 2 percent salt solutions -- but at 6 months, salty taste preference of the same infants was related to previous exposure to starchy table food, processed food including cereal, bread and crackers that had added salt.

"More and more evidence is showing us that the first months of life constitute a sensitive period for shaping flavor preferences," Stein said in a statement.