Do "Babies in the Womb" Hate Kale? (A skeptics take on the viral story)

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Amanda Marcotte
@AmandaMarcotte
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Thanks to @rebeccawatson for taking the time to look at this "fetuses don't like kale" study that was ringing my alarm bells. She corrected some of my misconceptions, and honestly, it's fascinating.

skepchick.org
Do “Babies in the Womb” Hate Kale?
Transcript: The other day I got a message from my pal Amanda Marcotte, requesting that I look into something that sounded really fishy, and just from the thumbnail and headline I laughed out loud: …
6:23 PM · Oct 1, 2022

https://skepchick.org/2022/09/do-babies-in-the-womb-hate-kale/

Transcript:

The other day I got a message from my pal Amanda Marcotte, requesting that I look into something that sounded really fishy, and just from the thumbnail and headline I laughed out loud: “Babies smile over carrots and scowl over kale inside the womb.” Like…let’s count the red flags there: first of all, the images are hilarious. The one on the left doesn’t look like a smiling baby, it looks like a fucking Cronenbert nightmare demon grinning because it’s about to eat my soul. But the most egregious red flag is the phrase “babies…inside the womb.” We can argue over whether NBCNews.com is actually, you know, journalism but if this IS journalism ABOUT a scientific study, then the correct term is “fetus.” Yes, if you are pregnant and you WANT to be pregnant of course you and your friends and your family will think of it as a “baby,” and that is absolutely okay and great for you, congratulations on your baby. No one is going to insist you call it anything else.

But in science and in journalism, it’s important to be precise because you’re trying to convey accurate information to others, and for that reason, it’s not a baby until it’s OUTside of the uterus. Before then, it’s a zygote, and then a blastocyst, and then an embryo, and then a fetus. And when someone uses those words incorrectly, it can cause confusion AND it can be a red flag that that someone might be anti-abortion rights, like referring to all fetuses as “babies” or even referring to embryos as fetuses, as in “fetal heartbeat” laws, which as I’ve said in the past are neither about fetuses nor heartbeats:

“They call these “fetal heartbeat bills,” which is just perfect because it truly encapsulates how little Republicans know or care about science, because they’re trying to say “this is when the poor little fetus’s heart starts beating” but at six weeks there is no heartbeat. THERE IS NO HEART. THERE IS NO FETUS. At six weeks, it is an EMBRYO. It is the size of a lentil. A few cells are just starting to form what will EVENTUALLY be a heart. You can put those cells in a petri dish and they will show activity. So, “fetal heartbeat” bill? No. Embryonic cardiac activity bill, maybe.”

Anyway, I clicked through to the article, which actually had the more accurate headline “Fetuses in the womb smiled after their mothers ate carrots but scowled over kale, research finds.” I was still a bit skeptical but the article itself is surprisingly good (and avoids the word “baby” throughout). Basically, researchers at the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab at Durham University filled capsules with either powdered carrot or powdered kale, and then gave them to about 70 women who were 8 or 9 months pregnant. An extra 30 pregnant women didn’t take any capsules as a control. About 20 minutes later, the researchers performed ultrasounds to see in real time how the fetuses reacted once the powdered veggies reached the amniotic fluid. They cataloged the facial expressions each fetus made, and found that in general, the fetuses who got the kale tended to grimace while the fetuses who got the carrot made laughing faces.

*snip*

[raging moderate]

1. Maybe the kale caused gas?

I was poor when I was young. My husband and I grew vegetables in the garden to stretch our budget, and the green peppers grew so well, and they have so many vitamins, I ate a lot of them! After awhile, I noticed that my baby son would have diahrrea every time I did, so I had to stop eating them until he was weaned.

[gldstwmn]

2. I knew there was an ulterior motive when story went viral.

Because I knew certain people were going to say "See! They can express themselves." It's very disingenuous.