Original title: Eating speed in complementary fed infants: associations with energy intake, weight status, breastfeeding, baby food pouch use and baby-led weaning
Alice M. Cox, Anne‐Louise M. Heath, Jillian Joy Haszard, Cathryn Anne Conlon +13 · October 2026
Researchers studied 625 infants between seven and ten months old to see what affects eating speed. They tracked meals using parent food diaries, questionnaires, and video recordings. Babies who fed themselves ate more slowly than babies who were spoon-fed. Breastfed infants also ate more slowly than formula-fed infants. Slower eating led to lower daily calorie intake from solid food, but it was not linked to an infant's weight.
At a shared family dinner, you might eat from a bowl filled by someone else or scoop out every bite on your own. When someone else controls the serving spoon, bites arrive fast, and you tend to finish far more food before realizing you feel full. Here, babies eating from a spoon provided by a caregiver consumed food much faster than those picking up their own meals. Controlling their own bite pace slowed infants down and naturally reduced how much solid food they consumed.
Parents often wonder whether letting babies feed themselves changes how much they eat. This study shows that letting babies feed themselves slows down their meal pace and cuts down daily energy intake from solid food. It also shows that eating speed at this stage is not tied to body weight.
The abstract does not show whether eating speed causes changes in weight over time, noting only that eating speed was not associated with infant weight status in this cross-sectional snapshot. It also does not determine long-term habits beyond ages 7 to 10 months. Additionally, video observations were conducted on only a subset of 205 infants rather than the entire sample.
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Eating speed in complementary fed infants: associations with energy intake, weight status, breastfeeding, baby food pouch use and baby-led weaning — Alice M. Cox, Anne‐Louise M. Heath, Jillian Joy Haszard et al. — International Journal of Obesity — doi:10.1038/s41366-026-02234-9
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.