6. Healthy nutrition

Nutritional strategies to promote a healthy rate of infant growth include:

• Maintaining breast feeding which is associated with a lower risk of child obesity
• Encouraging parents of formula fed infants who are growing rapidly, but otherwise healthy, to ensure their infants only receive a first infant milk rather than a hungry baby milk which may promote more rapid growth.
• Encouraging parents/carers to introduce solid foods no earlier than 6 months of age
• Where parents choose to introduce solids before 6 months, advising them to offer small amounts of fruits and vegetables which have high nutritional value but low energy density
• Encouraging parents/carers to offer a wide range of different tastes and textures, which is more important than quantity
• Encouraging parents/carers to offer repeated small tastes of any rejected foods, which can help to establish a varied and balanced diet
• Baby-led weaning, can be a more responsive style of feeding, but care needs to be taken to avoid offering too many energy dense foods such chips, toast and pasta