Researchers from the University of Nottingham asked more than 150 parents of children between the ages of 20 months and six-and-a-half to complete a questionnaire about their children’s weaning style and food preferences.
Ninety-two of the children had been allowed to feed themselves with finger foods and 63 had been spoon-fed pureed foods throughout the weaning process.
The findings indicated that children who fed themselves (baby-led weaning) liked carbohydrates more than children who had been spoon-fed. Carbohydrates proved to be the favourite food of the baby-led weaning group, whereas children who were spoon-fed preferred sweet foods.
This was despite the fact that children in the spoon-fed group were offered carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, proteins and whole meats-such as lasagne, more often than the babies who fed themselves.
One reason the authors give for the differences in findings is that carbohydrates, when presented whole like a piece of toast, may enhance a child’s awareness of textures, which they say are lost when food is pureed. They also suggest that the preference for carbohydrates among those weaned on solids could simply be that they are easier to chew than other solid foods such as meat.
They conclude that the findings of the study suggest that baby-led weaning could help ward off obesity in later childhood.
The study, Baby knows best? The impact of weaning style on food preferences and body mass index in early childhood in a case-controlled study, is published in the BMJ Open, an open access journal.