THURSDAY, Dec. 19, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Adding cereal to a baby’s bottle is a habit that’s been around for a long time to help introduce solid foods while also supplementing a mom’s breast milk.

But this practice can cause babies to pack on some pounds early in life, however, a new study says.

Infants were about 50% more likely to experience rapid weight gain if they were fed milk cereal drinks during their first year, according to results published Dec. 18 in the journal Acta Paediatrica.

“Milk cereal drinks were associated with early rapid weight gain,” concluded the research team led by Annelie Lindholm, a lecturer with the Halmstad University School of Health and Welfare in Sweden.

However, milk cereal drinks didn’t necessarily translate into childhood obesity.

Milk cereal drinks on their own were not associated with higher BMI or waist-to-height ratio by the time a child was 6, results show.

But overall early rapid weight gain was associated with childhood obesity, doubling a child’s risk of high BMI by age 6, results showed.

More research is needed to tease out the risks of both milk cereal drinks and rapid infant weight gain, researchers said.

“Despite the cross-sectional associations between early rapid weight gain and milk cereal drink consumption, this study could not demonstrate a long-term detrimental association between milk cereal drinks and adiposity later in childhood,” researchers concluded.

”Early rapid weight gain is a stronger independent predictor for childhood weight trajectories,” the team continued. “However, more evidence is needed to determine the impact of specific early feeding patterns on weight trajectories throughout childhood.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against adding cereal to an infant’s bottle.

Babies might gag on the thick mixture, or inhale it into the lungs, the AAP warns. The practice also might increase their risk of developing food allergies, or provide infants more calories than they need.

“A baby’s digestive system is not thought to be well prepared to process cereal until about 6 months of age,” the AAP says on its website. “When he is old enough to digest cereal, he should also be ready to eat it from a spoon.”

The new study was conducted in Sweden, where more than half of infants consume milk cereal drinks, researchers said.

These include milk cereal drinks sold on supermarket shelves, made from grains and dehydrated skim milk that’s mixed with hot water before bottle feeding.

For the study, researchers tracked the health of more than 1,300 children in Western Sweden whose physical stats and food habits were noted in 2007 and 2008 family surveys.

Follow-up data for more than 650 of the kids was collected in 2013 and 2014.

About 62% of the children were fed milk cereal drinks between 6 months and 1 year, results show. About 18% of the kids experienced rapid weight gain during infancy.

The infants who had rapid weight gain tended to be those fed milk cereal drinks, while breastfeeding tended to protect against such weight gain, researchers said.

“Breastfeeding during the first 4 months was significantly negatively associated with early rapid weight gain,” the research team concluded.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on adding cereal to a baby’s bottle.

SOURCE: Acta Paediatrica, Dec. 18, 2024; Wiley, news release, Dec. 18, 2024