Rapley Weaning .com

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Welcome!

I'm so pleased you've found this website - and that you're interested in baby-led weaning. However, before you get too excited I should explain that you won't find a lot of information here about how to use BLW with your baby; it's intended as a focal point for queries - to lead you to where you can learn more - rather than as a place to find out everything you ever wanted to know about BLW. The best place to get all of that is from the original book that I wrote with Tracey Murkett, and from the forums and blogs written by parents who are doing it.

The buttons on the left will take you to:

• Information on our books
• Information about three useful DVDs on BLW
• A simple 'how to' leaflet
• Basic BLW guidelines, with a brief explanation of the rationale behind them
• Details of the book in which there is a chapter about BLW
• A bit of background about me
• Links to just a few of the many websites and blogs about BLW
• The email address for this site

Great news! Research shows baby-led weaning promotes healthy food preferences.

An article published today in BMJ Open shows that baby-led weaning helps children to eat healthily. Researchers found that babies who fed themselves with finger foods from the start of weaning were likely to eat more healthily and have a healthier BMI later than those who were spoon fed purees. Children who were weaned using a baby-led approach liked carbohydrates more than children who had been spoon fed, whereas children in the spoon-fed group liked sweet foods the best. More children in the spoon-fed group were overweight or obese than those in the baby-led group.

The authors say: “Our study suggests that baby-led weaning has a positive impact on the liking for foods that form the building blocks of healthy nutrition, such as carbohydrates. This has implications for combating the well-documented rise of obesity in contemporary societies”.

The findings are based on 155 children between the ages of 20 months and 6.5 years, whose parents completed a detailed questionnaire about their children’s weaning style and food preferences.

This confirms what parents of BLW babies have known all along: babies really do know best!

The study, Baby knows best? The impact of weaning style on food preferences and body mass index in early childhood, can be viewed here:

BMJ Open

Click here for press coverage:

Press