by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Parenting

Letting your baby feed himself instead of spoon-feeding him could help your child become a more adventurous eater, but won?t stop him from overeating, a recent study suggests.
Researchers in New Zealand examined the effects of a popular method for starting babies on solid food called baby-led weaning (BLW). The practice involves allowing babies to feed themselves soft chunks of food directly from the high chair tray or table ? rather than being spoon-fed ? and to stop eating whenever they want.
Many proponents of BLW claim the method helps ward off obesity because children learn to regulate their own eating. But that?s not what the most recent study found.
Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the research involved randomly assigning 200 moms to start their babies on solids at 6 months old either using BLW or regular spoon feeding. When scientists calculated the babies? body mass indexes at ages 1 and 2, they found those in the BLW group were just as likely to be overweight as their spoon-fed peers.  
The findings contradict an earlier study that found children who started solids using BLW tended to have a lower body mass index than spoon-fed kids. However, the earlier study relied on parent questionnaires whereas the new study was a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard in scientific research. Even so, the new study was small so it could be research involving a larger group of babies would come to a different conclusion.
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