A baby’s food preferences are influenced by the first flavours they taste, new research has found.

Julie A. Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and colleagues fed 53 two-week-old babies one of two infant formulas: either one with a bland taste; or another that tastes bitter and sour.

After being fed one or the other exclusively for seven months, the babies were offered both.

The infants who had never tasted the nasty-tasting formula refused to eat it, while those who had consumed it all along were perfectly content to keep on eating it, the researchers reported in the the journal Pediatrics.

“This research may help us to understand early factors involved in human food preferences and diet choice, an area with many important health implications,” Mennella said.

Previous research had indicated that four- to five-year-old children who had been fed the unpleasant-tasting formula as infants were more accepting of sour tastes and smells than other children, the researchers said.

“Because we know that flavour preferences established early in life track into later childhood, eating habits in the growing child may begin to be established long before the introduction of solid food,” she said.