Nursing mothers have long been warned that garlic could upset their babies. A 1991 study found something closer to the opposite. When mothers took garlic, their milk smelled noticeably of it about two hours later, and their babies stayed at the breast longer and sucked more.
Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia reported the findings in Pediatrics. The work won the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize in Pediatrics, a research award that makes people laugh and then think, and it remains a reference point for anyone asking whether a mother's diet changes her milk.
