Variability in eating behavior throughout the weaning period.

During the introduction of solid food (usually indicated as the weaning period), infant and caregiver have to adjust their feeding interactions to a completely changed feeding context. In this paper, we argue that these adjustments can be seen as a complex process in which many factors are involved. As a result of these complex interactions, eating behavior can be highly variable between infants and from feed to feed. The aim of this study is to describe these patterns of variability across this critical transition in feeding. The study is based on naturalistic observations of 20 infant-caregiver dyads (15 repeated observations of each dyad), from the first attempt to spoon-feed till 12 weeks after the introduction of solid food. The results show that there is considerable short-term variability in eating behavior (food intake, meal duration, feeding efficiency, and food refusal), especially immediately after the introduction of solid food. The largest intra-individual variability was found in the earliest feeding sessions, which is consistent with the proposition that systems that undergo rapid development are most sensitive to context variables and thus most variable.