Beter
geen gepureerde voeding voor baby’s*
Ouders
kunnen hun kinderen beter geen gepureerde babyvoeding geven, de kinderen kunnen
daardoor later erg kieskeurig worden als het om eten gaat zegt de deskundige Gill
Rapley van Unicef.
Volgens haar kunnen moeders hun baby's gedurende de eerste zes maanden het beste
alleen borstvoeding of melk uit de fles geven. Andere voeding, zoals
fruithapjes, zouden in deze periode alleen maar meer kwaad dan goed doen. Na het
eerste halfjaar kan een kind, met of zonder tandjes, vaste voeding verteren. Ouders moeten daar vooral
gebruik van maken, zegt Rapley. De gepureerde prakjes die met een lepeltje naar
binnen worden geschoven, vertragen de ontwikkeling van een kind alleen maar
omdat het niet leert kauwen. Kinderen die veel uit potjes eten, hebben vaker
last van obstipatie en hebben minder snel een verzadigd gevoel. Daardoor zouden
ze een groter risico lopen om later teveel te gaan eten.
Pureed
food 'isn't natural for babies'
Feeding
babies on pureed food is unnatural and unnecessary, according to one of Unicef's
leading child care experts, who says they should be fed exclusively with breast
milk and formula milk for the first six months, then weaned immediately on to
solids.
Gill
Rapley, deputy director of Unicef's Baby Friendly Initiative and a health
visitor for 25 years, said spoon-feeding pureed food to children can cause
health problems later in life
She
blames the multimillion-pound baby food industry for persuading parents that
they need to give their babies pureed food. 'Sound scientific research and
government advice now agree there is no longer any window of a baby's
development in which they need something more than milk and less than solids,'
Rapley said.
The
industry in Britain is worth more than £450m, compared with £191m in 1989.
More than four out of five of Britain's one million babies aged between four and
20 months eat and drink baby food worth more than £120m a year.
Until
recently, the words 'baby food' conjured up nothing more exciting than a bit of
stewed apple and a rusk. Now, supermarket shelves groan with jars of organic,
fresh ingredients, with some ranges even seeking to tempt the discerning baby
with 'superfood' options and local ingredients.
Makers
of baby food say they are taking Rapley's study seriously. 'This is very new
research and we need to look at it very carefully,' said Roger Clarke,
director-general of the Infant and Dietetic Foods Associations, a group
representing such manufacturers as Heinz, Nestle, Boots and Nutricia.
'UK
infant food companies support a flexible approach to feeding infants, but the
age at which solids are introduced depends on the nutritional and developmental
needs of individual infants and a "one size fits all" policy is not
appropriate,' he added. 'Generations of mums and dads have relied on the simple
convenience of these special recipes as part of their baby's diet to provide
safe, sound nutrition with a wide variety of tastes and textures - from purees
that are easy to suck straight from a spoon to soft lumps that encourage chewing.'
But
Rapley, who has produced a DVD explaining how to follow a new feeding programme
called Baby-Led Weaning, points to an increasing number of scientific projects
and government guidance that she says support her programme. 'In 2002, the World
Health Organisation backed research that found breast or formula milk provided
all the nutrition a baby needs up to the age of six months,' she said. 'That
research said feeding a baby any other food during their first six months would
dilute the nutritional value of the milk and might even be harmful to the baby's
health.'
After
six months, Rapley says, babies are capable of taking food to their mouths and
chewing, making purees and spoon feeding unnecessary. 'The World Health
Organisation was so impressed by the research that it rewrote its
recommendations on baby feeding,' she said. 'A year later, the Department of
Health for England and Wales followed suit.'
Offering
babies pureed foods once they can chew is not only unnecessary, it could delay
the development of chewing skills, Rapley believes. In addition, allowing a baby
to take as much or as little food as it needs stops it becoming constipated.
Rapley
believes that babies allowed to feed themselves tend to become less picky,
develop better hand control more quickly and to avoid foods to which they are
later found to be intolerant. Rapley was inspired to investigate the widely
accepted use of pureed foods during her quarter-century as a health visitor. '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. So I started to wonder what would happen if we never
took the control away from them in the first place,' she said. After years spent
observing babies and conducting her own studies, Rapley developed her feeding
programme, which teaches that babies over six months should be in charge of what
goes into their mouths and when. 'Provided a child is sitting up straight and is
supervised by an adult, he or she can feed themselves a variety of healthy
finger foods with their hands,' she said.
(Juni 2007) (Opm.
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