For the first year of a baby’s life, the dietary angst experienced by many parents wanting to provide their children with the best nutritional springboard to life is the biggest burden of babydom.

First, there is the unending pressure to breast-feed and the seemingly unrealistic goal of keeping it up for six months. Then there is the descent into a frenzy of steaming, pureeing and freezing ice-cube blocks of sweet potato, carrot and butternut squash as your child is weaned on to solids. One false step and the fear is that your baby will end up at best a fussy eater, at worst an obesity statistic. But some people believe that the experts who advise this route to healthy eating have got it wrong.

In fact, a growing number of health researchers argue that the accepted wisdom on paediatric nutrition is inaccurate and should be changed.

The Government recently brought its advice about the age at which babies should start on solids in line with that of the WorldHealth Organisation (WHO), and it nowrecommends that parents introduce solids at about six months. Dr Gillian Harris, a clinical psychologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital who also lectures at Birmingham University, says that such guidelines “are based on no scientific evidence whatsoever”. She claims that they are derived from WHO studies in developing countries and are simply not applicable in the UK.

“We have bigger babies who are growing much faster,” she says. “I don’t know a single health professional in this country who agrees with the DoH suggestion that mothers should breast-feed exclusively for six months, and research shows that only 2 per cent of women manage it.” She adds that “there is no reasoning in terms of allergy prevention and no reasoning in terms of health”.

Annabel Karmel, the baby food guru, agrees. “There is a lot of confusion over when to introduce solids to your baby,” she says. “Many parents carry on giving fruit and vegetable purees for far too long, leaving it too late to introduce lumpy food. This makes the transition to family food difficult and increases the propensity for babies to be fussy eaters.”

Breast milk does not even provide enough iron for babies at six months, Harris says, and studies that she has submitted for publication to a major medical journal show that it is far more important for children to be eating vegetables by that age.

“We recently carried out a couple of studies which show that vegetable consumption before the age of six months is an accurate predictor of vegetable consumption at seven years,” she says. “It is quite staggering that the Government is giving mothers such ill-informed and inaccurate advice.” Beyond breast-feeding, other experts controversially suggest that parents should forget the next stage of weaning — purees and weaning spoons — and simply let babies feed themselves. Gill Rapley, a health visitor for 25 years and deputy programme director of Unicef UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative, is a proponent of “baby-led weaning” (BLW), a belief that babies who are allowed to feed themselves with a selection of finger foods are less likely to refuse foods or to become fussy eaters as they grow older. Parents face unnecessary pressure, Rapley says, from many health visitors and especially from the food industry to introduce puréed foods into their babies’ diets at an early age.

“At six months most babies have strong necks and can sit up if they are supported,” she says. “Their hand-eye coordination has developed to the extent that they can reach out and start to grasp food and grip it in their palms.”

She suggests using foods that are shaped like chips or that have a “handle”, such as cooked broccoli spears — small babies have not yet developed a pincer grip and can clasp foods only in their fists.

Many parents initially balk at this idea, fearing that their child may choke on solid foods, but Rapley says that this is highly unlikely. “As long as they are sitting up to eat, the risk of choking is minimal,” she says. In fact, difficulties are often encountered when puree-fed babies have to face second-stage weaning foods that contain lumps. “Because babies suck food off spoons, they don’t know whether to suck or chew when they encounter lumps in puree,” Rapley says. “Of the hundreds of parents who have tried BLW, I have heard no reports of choking children.”

Parents of three or more children often adopt the BLW method unwittingly but are reluctant to admit it because of peer pressures, Rapley says. “They haven’t the time or the inclination to make separate purées for their youngest offspring, who really wants to copy his siblings anyway.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that BLW results in less picky eating and — interestingly — early avoidance of foods to which the child is later found to be intolerant. In fact, once they have taken the leap of faith, most parents find it much easier than the conventional route. No more pureeing and spoon-feeding means more time to devote to other activities — and since you can feed the baby pretty much what you like (usually whatever the rest of the family is eating), it makes life so much easier.

Increasingly, experts are voicing their concerns that parents in the West are mistaking nutritional guidelines for a regimented process. In other countries a more freewheeling approach is used to start babies on flavourful fare: meat is given to babies in African countries, while the Japanese give them fish and radishes and the French think nothing of weaning on tomatoes and artichokes. Dr David Bergman, a Stanford University paediatrics professor who has been studying the issue, says that spices, for instance, are ignored by many guidelines, with parents simply advised not to introduce them to the diet until children are older. But that viewpoint is cultural, not scientific, he says, and from six months children can handle pretty much anything, including hot food.

“There’s a bunch of mythology about baby and infant feeding,” Dr Bergman says. “There’s not much evidence to support any particular way of doing things.”

How to feed your child the BLW way

–– Don’t wait until your baby is six months old before introducing solids. Start at four months, when breast milk does not satiate him.
–– By six months, or when your baby can sit up unaided, try giving finger foods so that he can feed himself.
–– Do not give purées or blended foods after six months, and do not allow your baby to feed himself soft foods with a spoon.
–– Choose foods that babies can handle well, such as broccoli spears, cooked carrot and courgette batons, and bread pieces.
–– Don’t be afraid to flavour foods with herbs and spices. Obviously you should introduce stronger flavours gradually, but there is no reason why anything should be avoided from a young age.

*A Baby-Led Weaning DVD by Gill Rapley is available for £25 from markittelevision.co.uk (01179 391117).

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