Around five months, two camps will descend on your Instagram feed and they will not get along. One camp says you must do baby-led weaning — strips of food, no spoons, the baby is in charge. The other camp says purees are how humans have fed babies for centuries and the BLW people are going to get a kid choked.
I read the research. The actual answer is much more boring than either camp wants you to know: both work, neither is meaningfully better, and you’ll probably end up doing some of each. Here’s what I found.
What the studies actually compared
The biggest randomized controlled trial on this is the BLISS study (Baby-Led Introduction to SolidS, New Zealand, 2017), which followed 206 babies from 5 to 24 months. Half were assigned to baby-led weaning with safety modifications, half to a traditional puree-then-finger-food approach. They measured iron status, growth, choking incidents, and food preferences.
The results, in three sentences:
- Iron status: No significant difference between groups at 12 months.
- Growth: No significant difference in weight, height, or BMI at 24 months.
- Choking: No significant difference in choking events between groups.
That last one is worth pausing on, because the choking fear is what drives most of the “BLW is dangerous” content online. The BLISS study found that gagging was more common in the BLW group early on (which is normal and protective — gagging is how babies learn to manage textures), but actual choking events were equally rare in both groups when families were taught how to prepare foods safely.
That last clause matters. The safety-modified BLW protocol explicitly excludes round, hard, slippery foods (whole grapes, whole nuts, chunks of raw apple, hot dog coins). If you do unmodified BLW with no guidance, the choking risk is real. If you do BLW with the standard food-prep modifications, it isn’t.
What this looks like in practice
For our family, the boring middle-ground worked best. We started Owen on solids at six months, the day he could sit unsupported and was watching us eat with what can only be described as professional interest.
The first month was about half puree, half soft finger foods:
- Purees: oatmeal, sweet potato, avocado, banana, pear. Single ingredient, no sugar, no salt.
- Finger foods: avocado wedges, soft-cooked sweet potato strips, banana spears (the long way, not coins), well-cooked broccoli florets used as handles.
By eight months he was mostly self-feeding. By ten months he refused the spoon entirely unless it was yogurt. The transition was natural; we didn’t have to “wean off” purees because he weaned himself.
The four foods I was most nervous about
The current AAP guidance is to introduce common allergens early (between 4 and 6 months for high-risk infants, 6 months for typical risk) rather than delay them. This was a major reversal from the old advice and it’s based on the LEAP and EAT trials, which showed early peanut introduction reduced peanut allergy rates by ~80% in high-risk infants.
The four I introduced deliberately, one at a time, with three days between each:
- Peanut: a thin smear of smooth peanut butter on a piece of soft toast. Never whole peanuts (choking) and never thick globs of peanut butter (also choking).
- Egg: well-scrambled, plain.
- Dairy: plain whole-milk yogurt (cow’s milk as a drink waits until 12 months, but yogurt and cheese are fine earlier).
- Wheat: a strip of toast.
None of them caused a reaction. If yours has a family history of food allergies, talk to your pediatrician about whether to introduce peanut even earlier.
What “picky eating” research actually says
The other claim BLW proponents make is that it produces less picky eaters. The BLISS study followed kids to 24 months and found no significant difference in food fussiness between the two groups. A separate 2020 review in Nutrients reached the same conclusion: feeding method at 6 months doesn’t predict picky eating at age 2 or 3. Genetics, exposure variety, and parental modeling matter much more.
If you want to reduce picky eating, the evidence-supported levers are:
- Repeated exposure. Kids may need to see a food 10–15 times before they accept it. Don’t conclude they hate broccoli after two tries.
- Eating with them. They model what they see. Eat what you want them to eat.
- Don’t make the table a battle. Pressure increases rejection. Offer the food, let them decide whether to eat it, move on.
The gear that actually mattered
Most of the “starting solids” gear is up-sells. The things we used every single day:
- A high chair that wipes clean (the wood ones look great on Instagram and are a nightmare in real life — go with a smooth plastic seat).
- A silicone bib with a catch-pocket. Cloth bibs go straight into the laundry pile every meal; silicone bibs rinse in the sink in 10 seconds.
- A silicone placemat or a sectioned suction plate. Anything that can be flung will be flung.
- Soft-tipped pre-loaded baby spoons. He held them himself and felt important.
Things we didn’t need: a baby food maker (a fork and a microwave are fine), squeeze pouches as a daily food (they’re fine for travel, but they bypass the chewing skill kids should be building), a separate “baby plate” cabinet (a regular small bowl works).
The thing I wish someone had told me
The first three weeks of solids are messy and slow and almost none of the food ends up in the baby. That’s normal. At 6–9 months, breast milk or formula is still the primary nutrition source. Solids are practice — for chewing, for tasting, for learning that food is a thing.
By 9–10 months the calories start to count. By 12 months, food is the main event and milk drops to a side dish. The transition happens naturally if you keep showing up with the spoon (or the broccoli stalk).
And the kitchen will be a disaster every single night for about a year. Buy a wet/dry handheld vacuum. It will be the best $40 you spend.
Related reading: Feeding a Newborn: Breast, Bottle, or Both covers the first six months. Cribsheet has Emily Oster’s data-driven take on the BLW vs. purees question if you want to go deeper.