Aim: The aim of the current study was to retrospectively examine introduction of food during the first year in a representative sample of Swedish children. A secondary aim was to study how parents with history of atopy introduced food to their infants.
Methods: Data derive from 467 infants who visited child health centres in three different counties in Sweden for health check-up at 12 mo of age. The parents were asked to fill in a questionnaire about breastfeeding and/or formula feeding, time of introduction of weaning food focusing on cow's milk, follow-on formula, porridge, fish and egg. Questions regarding hypersensitivity in the family, peanut consumption of mother as well as in the child, and questions about number of siblings, ethnic background and parental education were included.
Results: Compliance with suggested introduction of gluten-containing food was low; as many as 45% had avoided gluten until 6 mo of age, instead of introducing gluten between 4 and 6 mo. Only 33% of parents with stated family hypersensitivity avoided giving their child fish and 23% avoided egg during the first year, even though this recommendation was present at the time of the study. Almost 50% of all mothers had avoided peanuts during pregnancy even though there was no such advice. The avoidance of peanut was not connected to hypersensitivity in the family.
Conclusion: These results suggest that time of introduction of gluten was not in accordance with the current recommendation. The results imply that there is a need to follow up if and how this feeding information is distributed to parents with infants and also to sharpen the information to the right target groups, otherwise implementation of preventive strategies will be less useful.