Baby-led Weaning: not a newfangled fad.

"Where's your evidence to support #babyledweaning?"

Um ...

Sometimes people seem to forget primates - including humans - have transitioned from exclusive milk feeding to milk plus family foods for millennia. And spoon-feeding is a relatively modern concept, with no evidence-based research to support its practice, popularised in Eurocentric cultures. Around the world, mammals learn to eat through practice while their mothers milk meets their nutritional needs.

Hunter-gatherer families teach infants which foods are safe and edible from the safety of a baby carrier as their mothers gathered leaves, fruits and tubers throughout the day. The men would return from hunting and share the meat throughout the band of families. Babies would suck and chew on bones and pieces of meat.

There is nothing new about babies self-feeding. A short period of modern humanity experimented with spoonfeeding pureed foods to babies too young to feed themselves. Doctors interfered with natural feeding approaches by creating and prescribing cow milk formula and canned pureed fruit and vegetables in the early 20th century. This is not some long-held way of feeding babies: my grandparents, all born in the 1880s, probably didn't begin solids until around 11 months!!

Experiencing food is a normal and natural experience for humans in the second six months. It's just eating.