New study findings suggest that baby-led weaning—a popular method for introducing solid foods to infants—furnishes ample calories for growth and development. The findings provide evidence-based support for baby-led weaning, which has not been heavily studied. Baby-led weaning emphasizes allowing infants to hand feed themselves whole, non-pureed foods when introducing solids to infants versus the more traditional approach of spoon-feeding infants pureed solids.
Proponents say that it encourages healthy eating habits because babies self-feed and can explore a variety of foods from the family's meals. Using data from a large ongoing clinical study known as the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Trial (MINT), researchers showed that baby-led weaning provides the same number of calories per kilogram as conventional weaning and may promote higher growth trajectories. "One major concern with baby-led weaning was that it wasn't known whether it provided enough nutrients to support infant growth," said Kinzie Matzeller, a clinical research coordinator and registered dietitian at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
"It is reassuring to know that baby-led weaning provides adequate calories for growth." Matzeller presented the findings at NUTRITION 2024 , the flagship annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition held June 29–July 2 in Chicago. The researchers studied baby-led weaning in a subset of 70 healthy, 5-month-old full-term infants from the MINT study, wh.