Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine whether food variety and perceived food preferences differ in infants following baby-led instead of traditional spoon-feeding approaches to introducing solids. A total of 206 women (41.3% primiparous) were recruited in late pregnancy from a single maternity hospital (response rate 23.4%) and randomized to Control (n = 101) or BLISS (n = 105) groups. All participants received government-funded Well Child care. BLISS participants also received support to exclusively breastfeed to 6 months and three educational sessions on BLISS (Baby-Led Weaning, modified to reduce the risk of iron deficiency, growth faltering, and choking) at 5.5, 7, and 9 months. Food variety was calculated from three-day weighed diet records at 7, 12, and 24 months. Questionnaires assessed infant preference for different tastes and textures at 12 months, and for ‘vegetables’, ‘fruit’, ‘meat and fish’, or ‘desserts’ at 24 months. At 24 months, 50.5% of participants provided diet record data, and 78.2% provided food preference data. BLISS participants had greater variety in ‘core’ (difference in counts over three days, 95% CI: 1.3, 0.4 to 2.2), ‘non-core’ (0.6, 0.2 to 0.9), and ‘meat and other protein’ (1.3, 0.8 to 1.9) foods at 7 months, and in ‘fruit and vegetable’ foods at 24 months (2, 0.4 to 3.6). The only differences in perceived food preferences observed were very small (i.e., <5% difference in score, at 12 months only). Infants following the modified Baby-Led Weaning were exposed to more varied and textured foods from an early age, but only an increased variety in ‘fruit and vegetable’ intake was apparent by two years of age.
Highlights
Parents have traditionally introduced their infant to complementary foods by spoon-feeding them puréed foods
Advocates of BLW suggest this approach leads to healthier food preferences due to the infant being exposed to greater food variety and role modeling
[18,19], and infants who are repeatedly foods varying in taste and texture are approach leads to healthier food preferences due toexposed the infantto being exposed to greater food variety more willing tomodeling eat thosethrough foods ‘joining and other foods later in childhood [20,21]
Summary
Parents have traditionally introduced their infant to complementary foods by spoon-feeding them puréed foods. The progression may include some finger foods, these do not usually represent a significant component of the diet until later in complementary feeding [2,3,4,5,6] This parent-led approach to complementary feeding differs substantially from Baby-Led Weaning. Advocates of BLW suggest this approach leads to healthier food preferences due to the infant being exposed to greater food variety and role modeling 10,at x FOR. No research appears to have investigated whether baby-led approaches influence food variety, Led Weaning (BLW), which advocates bypassing purées and instead recommends that the infant selfeven though different first foods are typically offered [14,15,16,17].
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