Feeding babies on demand may help prevent obesity

By contrast, following grandmother’s golden rule of feeding babies only after every four hours can fuel the obesity epidemic in growing kids.

The study, carried out by researchers at the Queensland University Technology in Brisbane, Australia, found that babies are born with a sense of how much food they need and naturally stop eating when they are full.

Providing food at set times, even when the babies are not hungry, “can over-ride the baby’s innate appetite leading to piling on unnecessary pounds as they grow older.

“Obesity prevention needs to start very early,” The Telegraph quoted Professor Lynne Daniels, who led the study, as saying.

"Baby's have an innate capacity to regulate their intake. We are advising mothers to trust their baby. The mothers provide the nutrition and the baby decides how much it wants to eat.”

Study details and findings
For their study, the researchers tracked almost 300 babies and their mothers for the first two years of the babies’ life.

All the participants were interviewed about their parenting styles and feeding practices
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The study found that kids who were fed ‘on demand’ were lighter at 14 months as compared to others who were fed at regular intervals.

Daniels said, “If the mother is responsive, she is responding to the child’s cues of hunger and not over-riding them.

“Whereas, if a mother feeds in schedule, she decides whether or not he is hungry and is more likely to make the child finish the bottle.”

The research was presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul.