When Should I Start My Baby on Solids?

Last week at my son’s 3 month pediatrician visit, his doctor said we can discuss starting solids at next months visit (if that’s something we want to do). Typically I see a lot of sources recommend that solids should not be started until 6 months, but I guess depending on your child’s physical ability (i.e., able to sit up on their own, grab, etc)., it can be as early as 4 months, according to new research. A lot of the sources that recommend starting at 6 months recommend that because of reasons you have already debunked, so I’m wondering if there’s some conflicting information. It looks like there’s some new data and research that points to 4 months being totally acceptable, but wanted to see if you were able to read through the lines on this. Anyway, thank you in advance if you’re able to blog about this because it seems others are looking for the same information (moms groups, Google searches).
—Anonymous

One of my favorite parenting adages is: “Food is fun, until they’re one”. Which is to say that babies get most of their calories from breastmilk or formula in the first year, and food introduction is, at least in part, intended to introduce new textures, tastes, the idea of swallowing, etc. What I like about this is that it dials down some of the pressure around this — your kid isn’t eating entire chicken legs at 9 months? This is okay.

In terms of the date of introduction in the 4 to 6 month range. There are various studies which attempt to correlate date of food introduction with obesity later in life (here’s one example among many, here’s another). These are generally not randomized and as a result heavily subject to concerns that age of food introduction correlates with all kinds of other characteristics. The results are not especially consistent across studies, and combined with these causality concerns, the link seems very tenuous.

Babies vary in when they develop sufficient sitting and swallowing control to have food, so this is worth keeping in mind when you consider this. A 4 month old baby may mush around food more than eat it (the same is true for a 6 month old, perhaps less so).

One note on timing: we have increasing evidence that early introduction of allergens (around 4 months) lowers risk of developing allergies later. This includes peanuts most notably, but also milk and eggs. It may make sense to introduce these allergens at 4 months, although you don’t necessarily have to do it through solid food. Several companies (Ready, Set, Food; LilMixins) sell powdered versions which can be mixed with breastmilk or formula.