Concern over allergies when weaning symptomatic of a 'fear of food' - what do you think?

[Enid]

In my Jack Newman breastfeeding book, he suggests that babies should be weaned directly onto parents meals at 5/6 months, and that concern over allergies is symptomatic of a culture that 'fears food'.

I rather like that view. Anyone else agree?

i weaned dd onto our food at 6 months. we are all rather fond of food in our house :o.

Ooh, I dunno, Enid, that's an interesting one.

I think the level of passion which late-weaning advocates feel suggests there is something going on here. I was surprised when I read the research just how weak the evidence is for allergies being caused by early weaning, (and especially for the idea that weaning at 6 months instead of 4 will really make a difference) and yet most people seem to take it as a given. There seems to be a big change to weaning behaviour underway partly as a result of this (I know there are other reasons for the change in weaning advice, but people seem to be most aware of the allergies one), and yet the hygiene hypothesis for allergies is equally good if not better but there aren't any government campaigns telling us not to clean our houses so much or earnest mothers on mumsnet cautioning each other not to use so much bleach if they really love their children.

On the other hand, don't we have good reason to fear food? BSE was a pretty scary thought (though fortunately didn't turn out to be so bad as projected) and peanut allergies must be terrifying.

Who is Jack Newman? What's the book?

Very interesting.....and I would always take what JN says seriously (kathy - he's a witty and strong-minded Canadian paed who runs a long-established bf clinic).

I think there is a lot in what he says....not because of the timing thing, but because of the obsessive way our culture tells mothers to offer one food at a time only every x days, and to worry if 'they' can have beetroot or when to mash and when to 'risk' lumps and all the rest of the minutiae around giving solids. This is over and above any concerns about BSE or GM foods and peanut allergy - though as Kathy says, these rather support the idea we should be fearful of food! But a look at the boards on mumsnet with their weaning questions show just how uptight mothers can get about food - there's a Q at the moment wondering how long a baby should be 'allowed' to play with carrot sticks....I am not 'getting' at this mum, because all she is doing is worrying about what's best for her baby and she's part of the 'fearfulness' that makes going onto solids not so much a normal development as a hugely risky hurdle that has to be jumped exactly right :(

If you leave it to 6 mths or thereabouts, all the concerns about beetroot or one food every x days or mash and puree just become irrelevant.

I find the allergies thing the weakest part of the 'wait until 6 mths' thing (except for families where allergies are obviously present). The strongest part is the evidence that babies (mostly) simply don't need anything more than breastmilk until (about) then, and if you do give them solids earlier, you are inevitably going to faff on with bloody purees and baby rice and (probably) less breastmilk. Life is too short for that.

There is definitely more fear of allergies these days. Not sure why? I don't ever remember not feeding something to my child because of a fear of allergy. My youngest was weaned more than 10 years ago. Things sure have changed.

Tiktok - I have to admit I quite enjoyed the whole pureeing, spooning stuff in and crossing it off a list thing! However I agree it's barmy, and I probably wouldn't do it next time (no novelty value, and I'll be too busy looking after the older one.)
The argument given in the Gina Ford book for doing this (rather than waiting until later when, as you say, it's simpler) is that it makes the child less likely to be fussy later if they're introduced to a range of foods early on. Now, without commenting on the validity or otherwise of this argument, I would suggest that it reflects another area of our anxiety around food, in addition to the idea of food itself being dangerous: the fear that your child will not eat properly when you grow up becomes a fear that your relationship with the child, as expressed through food, will be problematic.
Oh dear, sounding a bit woolly and sociological there.... but it's v interesting isn't it?

all v interesting

Dont forget that the tasteof breastmilk varies according to what you eat so GF's point is kind of irrelevant about needing to be introduced to new tastes early. (hope that doesnt get deleted).

I gave dd at 6 months whatever, and never worried about one food at a time.

Gina Ford talking bobbins again - quelle surprise not.

There is no evidence (in fact, the opposite) that fussiness is associated with late waning - read the DoH's info for health professionals on this (somewhere on the web - prob referenced on mumsnet at least once). Gina Ford has either made this up, or she has simply parrotted the advice of whichever outdated advisers advise her....:)

I agree, Kathy - more evidence of our anxiety about food.

waning = weaning

Ooh, not sure you're being quite fair to GF there, Tiktok.
What Gina Ford says is that a researcher, Gillian Harris who is a senior lecturer in clinical psychology at Birmingham University, has found that 'babies introduced to a wide variety of non-allergy-forming foods from the age of four months would accept a wider range of foods at one year than those weaned on a restricted diet.' You can find refs on Harris's homepage \link {http://147.188.20.138/fmi/xsl/staff/wp.xsl?-db=staff&-lay=Main&-recid=718&-find=\here} Now, obviously this is not the same as saying 'late weaning causes fussiness' (which GF then gives as her opinion, and says quite openly that opinion is what it is.) Would need to look at the original papers (do you know them, Tiktok?) to see if there is anything in them which backs up that view.

Sorry about link - dd is "helping"! But you probably already know the research anyway so don't need it!

just noticed a line in that page of the GF book which would really make your blood boil, T - she talks about infants being allowed 'excessive' quantities of milk' between 4 and 6 months - WTF?!

Well if he saw a child wih lips the size of bananas and a swollen tounge and difficulty breathing after eating adult food (humous) he might understand a parents fear of food.

Docs don't know that much about allergies but they think that reduced exposure to common allergens until the immune systen develops a bit reduces the chance of allergic reactions. In my case DS was exposed to humous cos I ate loads of it while I breasfed. His exposure came through my milk. If there is no family history of allergies I would adopt a relaxed approach but avoiding common allergens such as nuts and seeds is sensible untill we know more about how our immune system and allergens interact.

Noone in our family has allergies anything as severe as DS's.

Kathy, I am being perfectly fair to GF. She is talking rubbish.

I know that research very well - and it does not give evidence for what GF is saying, and I have had to explain this several times to people who think it does.

Harris is contrasting weaning onto a variety of foods with weaning onto a restricted number of foods.

She is not saying 'wean at four months' at all.

She is not contrasting weaning at four months with weaning at 6 months.

The babies in her study were weaned at four months - that's just the age they happened to be.

If she repeated her study with babies at 6 mths, she might well find the ones who were least fussy were the ones who were weaned onto a variety of tastes.

It's a study of behaviour (she is a psychologist, not a nutritionist) and what she found is unsurprising in the extreme to anyone who knows anything about infant behaviour - make a fuss about weaning (at whatever age it starts) by restricting tastes and recording amounts and all the rest of the unnecessary paraphernalia about weaning we see all the time, and you are more likely to have a fussy baby.

Stay relaxed, follow your baby's lead and encourage a variety of tastes from the beginning, and your baby is less likely to be fussy.

Like, duh :)

This is nothing to do with weaning at 6 mths.

Just to clarify - when I say 'If she repeated her study with babies at 6 mths, she might well find the ones who were least fussy were the ones who were weaned onto a variety of tastes.'....I mean 'she might well find the ones who were least fussy were ALSO the ones weaned onto a variety of tastes'.

My point being that the age of the babies was not an issue in that study - it was the behaviour of the parents Harris was looking at.

Thanks Tiktok - v interesting!

There has been an explosion in the number of people with allergies over the last 30 years. No-one really knows why but the hygiene hypothesis is the current favourite (the one about keeping young children and their environment too clean so they aren't exposed to pathogens to build up their immune system). There's research showing that farmers' children are less likely to have allergies, for instance.

I believe current advice about being careful about weaning because of food allergies just reflects the fact that there's an increase in the number of allergies and in the absence of definitive evidence it's best to take what precautions you can.

But it's equally true that an awful lot of people believe they have allergies when they don't. And that a lot of companies are getting rich on the backs of the worried well, by pretending to diagnose allergies which don't exist. I did some research on this (not clinical research). We sent two samples from each volunteer to some of these private allergy testing companies. The companies managed to give different verdicts on the samples from the same person. And diagnosed allergies in people who don't have them, and missed allergies in people who did have them.

It would be interesting to get some historical perspective on weaning. Is early weaning a late 20th-century oddity? Mums in the 70s putting rusks in the bottles and so on... All I know is that in the Shakespeare play, Juliet was breastfed until the age of 3 (by her wetnurse). Which isn't terribly helpful for developing comprehensive weaning advice...

Do we need to distinguish here betweeen weaning meaning 'introducing solids' and 'stopping breastmilk'? I don't know which usage is correct (if either) but the two don't necessarily go together do they?