Objectives:

to assess the attitudes of Spanish primary care paediatricians regarding complementary feeding and review the published evidence on the baby-led-weaning approach.

Methods:

a thirty-six item questionnaire about complementary feeding and baby-led-weaning was drafted and distributed through the Spanish Association of Primary Care Paediatricians mailing list.

Results:

we received 579 responses. Of all respondents, 95.3% reported using an informational handout (28.6% of their own making). Paediatricians recommended introducing complementary foods at age 6 months (60.6%), 5 months (24.9%) and 4 months (10.7%), and cereal was the food recommended to start complementary feeding by 39.4% of respondents. Nearly 61% of physicians recommended spoon-feeding, 21.4% bottle-feeding and 17.4% no particular feeding method. Of all respondents, 54.6% recommended giving the child foods to chew as soon as the child showed interest in it, and up to 10.7% recommended delaying it under age 1 year. Seventy-nine percent knew about baby-led-weaning, 45.3% recommended it in some cases and 6.6% routinely. The main concerns of the respondents were lack of information (67.2%), lack of scientific evidence (10.6%) and the potential risk of choking (10.6%).

Conclusions:

there is huge variability in the recommendations regarding complementary feeding. The approach used most frequently in Spain is the traditional one. The number of paediatricians that know about the baby-led-weaning approach is growing, but few are prepared to recommend it routinely.

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