What if a mother could predispose her child to like broccoli or Brussels sprouts – or at least not make a face and spit it out – by what she ate during pregnancy?

Some health care practitioners are suggesting that if mothers include a wide range of foods in their diet during pregnancy, they can shape their children’s food preferences later in life. Those choices, researchers say, have the potential to reduce the risks of diabetes and obesity.

The concept is called prenatal flavor learning. The flavor and odors of what mothers eat show up in the amniotic fluid, which is swallowed by the fetus, and in breast milk. There is evidence that fetal taste buds are mature in utero by 13 to 15 weeks, with taste receptor cells appearing at 16 weeks, according to researchers.

“With flavor learning, you can train a baby’s palate with repetitive exposure,” said Kim Trout, director of the nurse midwifery/women’s health nurse practitioner program at Georgetown University.

Trout recently co-authored a paper that reviews the evidence on prenatal flavor learning and its implications for controlling childhood obesity and diabetes, among the country’s most pressing health problems.

She is incorporating the concept into the curriculum of Georgetown’s two-year midwifery master’s degree program.

“I tell them there is good evidence that their babies could develop flavor preferences based on what they’re eating, and I also tell their partners if they are doing the cooking,” said Trout.

Trout said she sees evidence in her own case. When she was pregnant with her daughter, she adhered to a strict nutritional plan that she taped to her refrigerator. Her daughter has a good diet and is a great cook, she said.