Feeding babies to keep them quiet may be a contributing factor in obesity epidemic

MOTHERS who feed their babies to stop them crying could be fuelling the obesity epidemic, a US study suggests.

Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine wanted to find out whether they could cut the number of overweight and obese toddlers by changing the behaviour of parents.

They found that many women fed their babies to soothe them even when they were not hungry, and as part of a wider intervention, asked a group of 140 mothers to use other techniques, such as swaddling, if a child was upset.

Researchers followed up the children when they were three years old and found just 13.8 per cent of toddlers in the intervention group were overweight or obese compared with 27.6 per cent of the control group.

“Some of our research is based on the idea that food should be used for hunger, not for other purposes such as to soothe or to reward a child,” said Ian Paul, professor of paediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine.

“Babies soothed with food early on may be more likely to use food to soothe their distress later on in life.

“These behaviours are imprinted early. So our research intervention was designed to intervene early when these behaviours are being established and before obesity develops.” Leann Birch, professor of foods and nutrition at the University of Georgia, who co-led the project, said parents were often concerned about making sure the child got enough to eat, and so feeding was often their first response to infant crying.

“Babies cry for many reasons, though, including being be too cold or too hot, tired, bored or gassy,” she said.

“The parenting intervention includes helping parents choose and use appropriate infant soothing strategies, including feeding, swaddling, a pacifier [dummy] or white noise, contingent on the infant’s needs.”

Mothers in the intervention group received four nurses’ home visits during their baby’s first year. They were taught how to soothe fussy infants without feeding them and warned to avoid using food as a reward or encourage children to “eat up” if they are full.

Some parents who would have used the old school “clean your plate” philosophy before were taught not to do that, added Prof Paul.

They were also shown how to instil good sleep patterns through regular bedtime routines and how to create healthy diets by repeatedly exposing infants to vegetables and fruits even when the infant initially refused to eat them.

The findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.