For as long as I can remember, I have hated bananas. The smell of them, the feel of them and most of all, the taste of them. Thinking about them gives me the willies. (So, naturally, my children are constanty trying to find ways to get me to eat one.)

Now, some scientists believe that they may have discovered a reason. It's my mother's fault. (Wouldn't Freud be happy!)

Allow me to expand on this theory. When I was a youngster, my mother fed me artificial banana products. You know, what companies now call "genuine artificial flavor." I didn't have a REAL banana, apparently, for months. To this day, my mum is convinced that this was the reason for my bananaphobia. And, lo and behold, according to what some scientists are saying, my life-long aversion to bananas may be the direct result of my mother's nefarious action, and not because of some weird genetic thing.

According to Monday's Toronto Globe and Mail the flavors that "children, even adults, enjoy is dictated – at least partly – by what they were fed as young infants, according to Julie Mennella and her colleagues at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research institute based in Philadelphia. The study showed how four-month old infants' could develop preferences for, or aversions to, particular tastes. (Like hating bananas.)

Ms. Mennella comments on some of the implications, "Because we know that flavor 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." (Like hating bananas.)

Once again, science discovers something that my mother knew four-and-a-half decades ago! (by Tom Regan)