Chapter 8 – Baby-led Weaning

The first foods introduced beyond milk have traditionally been offered as purées or mashed meals, administered with a spoon, without the baby’s active involvement. In the last 10–15 years, a new trend has emerged that has gained considerable popularity among parents: baby-led weaning (BLW) or self-weaning.

This method involves offering the baby small pieces of the same foods consumed by the rest of the family right from the start and encouraging them to grab, bring to the mouth, and taste the food on their own, following their curiosity and appetite (11).

The supposed benefits of this approach include stimulating the child’s autonomy and self-regulation skills, familiarizing them from the beginning with a wider variety of flavors and textures, and more actively involving them in family life by fully sharing the table experience. However, some pediatricians and parents who are less enthusiastic about this practice fear a greater risk of choking and an inadequate or low-nutrient diet, potentially leading to delayed growth.

It is not easy to objectively evaluate baby-led weaning, as it is rarely applied in a purely exclusive way. Often, the same child is offered both adult-style finger foods and traditional purées. Moreover, the nutritional choices reflect the more or less healthy dietary habits of the family. In recent years, the first studies on the subject have been conducted on a relatively large scale (12).

So far, the collected data does not show an increased risk of choking, iron deficiency, or malnutrition in children exposed to this practice. On the other hand, there is no solid evidence of better appetite regulation or a lower risk of obesity. If children eat smaller amounts of solid food compared to those fed purées, they tend to compensate temporarily by drinking more milk.

Parents who want to try this approach should, according to experts, follow certain precautions: if the child is allowed to eat what the parents are eating, the entire family must follow a particularly healthy and balanced diet; at every meal, the child should be offered at least one iron-rich food and one high-energy food; the food pieces should be sized so that the child can easily grasp and bring them to the mouth, have a texture appropriate to the child’s chewing and mashing ability, and should not crumble or separate into long fibrous strands—such as a whole slice of ham, for example.