Perhaps I can blame the fact that I can't take the bitterness of beer on my mother. It seems that on top of all the known hazards of drinking while pregnant, it also just might give your kid a taste for booze.
Emphasis on the might. This is one of those studies that should be taken with a grain of salt, as it was done on rats and the pregnant rat moms were basically kept drunk much of the time, not just allowed to sneak a glass of wine now and then. (While I'm all about not being alarmist, I hope there's no one out there who thinks a constant BAC of .15 during pregnancy is acceptable.)
With those caveats in mind, the results: baby rats born to alcohol-soaked mothers were distinctly more interested in licking alcohol-covered feeding tubes than the controls. Shocking, no? They were also more willing to lick a non-alcohol bitter substance, making the researchers figure the efect of fetal alcohol exposure on taste in particular is to reduce the resistance to bitter flavors.
I have to say, I think it's a stretch to go from here to surmising that this is why fetal alcohol exposure is linked to higher rates of alcohol abuse at 21. Is "it's an acquired taste" really that much of a barrier if the other conditions for abuse are in place? Wouldn't it just drive you to sugary, non-bitter drink and worse hangovers? (Or conversely, if other risk factors for abuse aren't present, is liking the taste enough to make you abuse it?)
Photo by Chris Owens.
More by this author:
