Pureed Baby Food is 'unnecessary'
A Unicef childcare expert has warned that spoon-feeding babies pureed food is 'unnatural and unnecessary'.Gill Rapley who is the deputy director of Unicef's Baby Friendly Initiative said feeding babies in this way could cause health problems later in life. She said that if children are fed only with breast or formula milk for the six months and then weaned onto solids, it could prevent them becoming fussy with their food and more importantly, it gives them control over how much they eat.
"I found so many parents were coming to me with the same problems -'my child is constipated, my child is really picky' - and they couldn't get them on to second stage baby food." Her own feeding programme, called Baby-Led Weaning, involves babies receiving only milk for the first six months.
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Breast or formula milk provides all the nutrition a baby needs up to the age of six months. She says that research has shown that feeding a baby any other food during the first six months would dilute the nutritional value of the milk and might even be harmful to the baby's health."
After six months, Mrs Rapley says babies are capable of taking food into their mouths and chewing it, and feeding them pureed food during this time could actually delay the development of chewing skills. So she says that instead they should be given milk and solid pieces of food which they could chew. Letting a baby choose how much to eat during this time could stop them becoming fussy eaters later in life, or developing constipation.
In her opinion, the food industry is to blame for convincing parents that they should give children pureed food. She said: "Sound scientific research and government advice now agree that there is no longer any window of a baby's development in which they need something more than milk and less than solids."
Many experts believe that purees could help some babies make the transition between liquid and solid foods more easily as not all babies have the motor skills necessary to chew food and would just push food out of their mouths.
Roger Clarke, director-general of the Infant and Dietetic Foods Association which represents members of the food industry, said the research needed to be looked at carefully and that a "one size fits all" policy on baby-feeding was not appropriate. He added that generations of parents had relied on baby foods to provide a "safe, sound nutrition" for their babies.
June 2007
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