What you feed your baby when she starts eating solid foods matters, and research out of the UK sheds more light on just how much it does. Following children over 8 years enrolled in The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, researchers at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health at the University of Bristol identified a number of different dietary patterns at 6 and 15 months of age and examined their link with weight and IQ 8 years later.
Families fall into different feeding patterns
At 6 and 15 months of age, parents were asked about the foods they routinely feed their children. Their responses were then compared with one another, and people were placed into groups, based on the choices that they typically made.
At both ages, three distinct dietary patterns were identified:
- Homemade traditional (home-made meat, vegetables and desserts);
- Discretionary (processed adult foods); and
- Ready-Made Baby Foods (commercial ready-made baby foods).
At 6 months the parents also identified a Breastfeeding pattern (which included fruit and vegetables) and at 15 months a Homemade Contemporary (cheese, fish, nuts, legumes, fruit and vegetables). Roughly seven years later, when the children were 7 and 8 years old, the researchers measured their IQ levels using standard tests.
IQ was linked to diet choice
What did the researchers find? At 8 years old, IQ was negatively associated with being fed the Discretionary and Ready-Made Baby Foods patterns at 6 and 15 months of age but positively associated with being fed the Breastfeeding and Homemade Contemporary patterns in infancy and toddlerhood.
A large, and growing, body of research has shown us that early exposer to a wide variety of {largely healthy} foods is associated with better health outcomes later in childhood, and even into adulthood, but this study provides further evidence that our first food choices might also impact brain development.
Put the research into practice
Does this mean that you can never give your kids Ready-Made baby food? That the only way to ensure their healthy growth and development is to puree raw fruits and vegetables? No. It does not.
But the research does provide some guardrails that you can use to help you think about the choices you do make regarding food, especially in those early months and years. Here's how.