Babies Should Start with Complementary Foods Earlier

World Health Organization has issued recommendations on the time when the child should be best transferred from breastfeeding to complementary foods. But the British researchers have reached the conclusion that the late introduction of complementary foods may harm the child’s health. This kind of discovery can lead to a real revolution in the fields of neonatology and pediatrics.

According to the authors of the study, introducing complementary foods should take place before reaching the age of six months. And feeding with breast milk, in its turn, threatens with certain risks to the health of the developing organism.

• First of all, breastfeeding causes a high risk of iron deficiency anemia. Moreover, anemia can take a lot of time to discover.
• Apart from that, the researchers note that the child has a greater tendency to be allergic to foods after consuming only mom’s milk for a long time.
• In addition, the children who are breastfed for a long time may suffer from further problems with the gastrointestinal tract.

However, whenever the authors of the study suggest complementary foods, they do not mean artificial mixtures based on milk, but real “adult” food.

The authors also note that they are by no means opposed to breastfeeding of babies, they merely shift the starting date of using complementary foods from six months to four months.

Source of the image: Photl.