Spoon fed babies recipe for weight issues

Babies who are spoon-fed by their parents are more likely to end up overweight or even obese, a new book claims.

By contrast, those allowed to feed themselves a range of solid foods from the age of six months, a process known as baby-led weaning, are trim, healthy and adventurous eaters.

The author, Amy Brown, an expert in infant feeding and associate professor at Swansea University in the UK, says parents should let their babies feed themselves from the age of six months, eating the same as older siblings. There are, however, some key exceptions such as carrot sticks, apple slices, grapes or cherry tomatoes, which could stick in a baby’s throat.

She admitted that letting babies feed themselves could be messy, but this was part of the learning process. ‘‘Kids need to learn about food. They need to find out, ‘What happens if I squash this or drop it on the floor?’’’

The book, Why Starting Solids Matters, published next week, includes research papers, including a study of 300 babies in the UK that shows that more than twice as many babies spoon-fed from the age of six months were overweight by the time they were toddlers compared with babies allowed to feed themselves from an array of ‘‘finger foods’’.

Only 8 per cent who fed themselves solid foods were overweight by the time they were aged two compared with 19 per cent in the spoon-fed sample group. The average difference in weight was 1kg.

The book says babies allowed to feed themselves stopped eating when they were full and were therefore less likely to overeat. The research findings were independent of other factors such as birth weight, weaning age, breastfeeding and the mother’s background.

Brown adds that parents who want to spoon-feed children should be careful not to force them to finish a jar of food. ‘‘Let them eat as little as they want. A jar of baby food is too big for what a little baby needs. When you are waving the spoon around and saying ‘Here comes the big aeroplane – let’s finish it’, if they clamp their mouth shut, forget about it. They will not starve.’’

The UK National Health Service weaning guidelines say babies should be offered soft finger foods that they can self-feed alongside spoon-fed purees from six months old.

Elizabeth Carter, a mother of two from Scunthorpe, said her daughter, Catherine, 2, started feeding herself solid food from the age of six months. They say finance ministers never forget their first Budget. So don’t be surprised if Steven Joyce wears a purple tie to his next Budget, assuming he gets one.

That was the colour tie his daughter picked out for him to present his first budget and if National wins the September 23 election Joyce will know he delivered the right Budget for the times. That’s how Budget Day traditions are born. Politicians, like sportspeople, are superstitious too.

Joyce’s Budget is hardly the most memorable we’ve seen but it ticked the boxes that needed to be ticked. Here are the top four reasons why.

Labour immediately attacked the more miserly end of the tax threshold changes that deliver the very lowest-paid workers chump change of not much more than $1 a week. But barely had Andrew Little coined the phrase ‘‘$1 bill’’ to attack the Budget than the Greens and NZ First pulled the rug out from his feet by voting for it.

It boxes Labour in on spending

Little has already pledged to honour the boost to Working for Families and the accommodation supplement if he is in power and is non-committal on the tax threshold changes. That adds up to a $2 billion raid on spending Labour might have otherwise committed elsewhere.

It pushes even further into Labour territory

Labour is tearing its hair out. National’s last Budget dived deep into Labour’s heartland by raising benefit levels by $20 a week, the first increase in decades. The bigticket items in this Budget are all about low and middle-income workers – using Labour’s one-time flagship policy Working for Families – boosting public services and tackling child poverty. It’s all about the battlers, in other words – once Labour’s blue collar core. There was barely a nod to National’s more traditional constituency of high-income earners, who do best out of the tax threshold changes but not obscenely so. It’s hard for Little to make much political capital out of the ‘‘fat cats’’ getting an extra $33 a week in the hand (though he will try).

It doesn’t rock the boat

With regime change comes uncertainty and the big question was not just whether National could survive the loss of one of our most popular prime ministers ever, but upheaval in the finance role. Trust in Bill English as a safe pair of hands was high for his stewardship of the country’s finances through the global financial crisis and Christchurch earthquakes. Joyce needed to deliver a Budget that reassured voters it was business as usual. He achieved that – though it helps when inheriting whopping surpluses, uninterrupted growth and the ability to spend and pay off debt at the same time. *** But while Joyce’s first Budget was well received, it’s not all bouquets. The Budget was predictable if not boring and while risk, debt repayment over boldness. But the mood may be changing. The polls might say something different and New Zealand’s economic story is the world’s envy. But out on the street it’s hard to get a sense that people are feeling the glow. What was once seen as a strength risks looking dull and plodding.

National identity

Helen Clark campaigned on a vision for a sustainable New Zealand. She was probably ahead of her time. The missing factor in Joyce’s Budget was a big, bold move on an issue that goes to the heart of our national identity, our 100 per cent pure, clean green brand. Putting its money where its mouth is on the environment, making the protection of our national brand its No 1 priority, would be the the big bold visionary move that everyone is looking for from National. We all know that reputation is at risk and once gone it will never be back. But so far the Government has paid little more than lip service to climate change and has become bogged down in semantics over freshwater quality.

It’s still not enough

Housing, schools, hospitals and infrastructure are all under pressure from population growth and immigration and it’s no longer just an Auckland problem. The Budget threw more money at health but it is probably not enough to stop the headlines about patients missing out because their local hospital and health services are feeling the squeeze.

The wealth effect of rising house prices has made many people better off but the grumbling is getting louder about local issues like P, the hollowing-out of town centres as a result of retail decline, beggars in the street and a growing divide between the haves and the havenots.

And parents are grumbling that they are having to dig deeper into their own pockets to fund school activities as schools cry poverty. *** But this after all, was an election-year Budget. It’s a given that by the time the campaign proper rolls round voters would have banked the Budget Day gains in their minds and be asking ‘‘what else?’’. As National’s campaign manager Joyce knows this better than most.

So don’t be surprised if he’s saving the best till last.