Food Aversions

What Food Aversions Are

A food aversion is a strong, often sudden dislike for a food, drink, or smell that a person tolerated fine before pregnancy. In a study that followed 99 pregnant women, 54% reported food aversions at some point, close to but slightly less common than the 61% who reported food cravings, and researchers found the two weren't statistically related: a craving in one category didn't predict an aversion in another.^[1]

Aversions and nausea are studied together because they show up on a similar timeline. In that same study, there was a significant positive correlation between the week nausea first appeared and the week food aversions first appeared. In 60% of women who reported both symptoms, the very first occurrence of each happened in the same week of pregnancy.^[1] Researchers point to taste aversion learning, a well-studied process in which the body links a food to a feeling of sickness and then avoids it, as one mechanism behind at least some of these aversions.^[1]

How It's Logged

There's no test for a food aversion. It's self-reported, logged by what the food or smell was and roughly when it started. Because research shows aversions often begin the same week as nausea, logging both side by side over the first trimester can show whether that overlap holds true for you.

Why People Track Food Aversions

Food aversions are one part of a broader shift in appetite and taste that shows up early in pregnancy, alongside nausea and, for some people, food cravings pulling in the opposite direction. Logging aversions with a date captures which foods are affected and when the pattern started, which is easy to lose track of once it's just become part of how meals feel that trimester.

One evolutionary hypothesis, developed by researchers studying morning sickness, proposes that aversions to certain foods, particularly meat and strongly flavored plant foods, helped protect a pregnant person and a developing embryo from foodborne pathogens and natural plant toxins during the first trimester, the period when the embryo is undergoing the most rapid organ development.^[2] That framing treats aversions as a byproduct of the same protective system researchers propose behind morning sickness itself.^[3]

How Go Go Gaia Tracks Food Aversions

Go Go Gaia logs food aversions with a 1-click entry in pregnancy mode, so a new aversion takes seconds to record the moment it shows up. Each entry sits on the same timeline as nausea, cravings, and everything else you're tracking, so you can see how your appetite is shifting week to week.

What the Research Shows

The 99-woman study that established the timing link between nausea and food aversions also found nausea itself was reported by 80% of participants and vomiting by 56%, putting aversions in the same range of commonness as the other early-pregnancy symptoms it was studied alongside.^[1] The authors describe their data as good support for taste aversion learning as one mechanism behind some, though not necessarily all, food aversions in pregnancy, and call for further prospective research to confirm the timing relationships they found retrospectively.^[1]

The evolutionary framing of pregnancy-related nausea and food aversion, developed in a widely cited review, points to peak symptoms overlapping with the weeks of embryonic organ development and to aversions concentrating on animal products, which can carry pathogens, and on strong-tasting plant foods, some of which contain natural toxins.^[2] A related line of research on nausea and vomiting of pregnancy makes the same point about the biological rationale for avoiding these foods early in pregnancy specifically.^[3]

Related Terms

Frequently Asked Questions

Educational information based on published sources. Not medical advice. For personal concerns, please consult your doctor.

How common are food aversions in pregnancy?

In a study of 99 pregnant women, 54% reported food aversions. That's slightly less common than food cravings, which 61% of the same group reported, and the two weren't statistically related to each other.^[1]

Do food aversions and nausea happen at the same time?

Often, yes. Research found a significant positive correlation between the week nausea first appeared and the week food aversions first appeared, and in 60% of women who reported both, the two started in the very same week of pregnancy.^[1]

Why do some researchers think food aversions evolved?

One influential hypothesis, developed by evolutionary biologists studying morning sickness, proposes that aversions to certain foods, particularly meat and strongly flavored plant foods, helped pregnant women avoid foodborne pathogens and natural plant toxins during the first trimester, when a developing embryo is most vulnerable to them.^[2]