The authors of the study certainly don't make sweeping claims for the
'weaning style' being the sole factor involved in determining child
BMI.  They made an effort to control for confounders and these are
well illuminated in the article, which seems to be freely accessible
on line.
Rather than responding to mass media renditions of the press release,
I encourage you to read the article itself.  Of course parents who are
more relaxed are going to be more inclined to trust themselves and
their babies to eat enough to stay alive.  And parents who are
encouraged to trust their children, may become more relaxed as they
observe that the child is not starving to death nor succumbing to
terminal anemia or showing signs of cognitive delay as a result of not
eating the requisite amount of solids (these are the scenarios
Norwegian parents are scared with if they dare to deviate from the two
helpings per day of iron-fortified cereal regime from six months at
the very LATEST, followed in rapid succession by jars of mashed dinner
and of course the elimination of the unnecessary night breastfeeds).
From the discussion section in the original article by Townsend and Pitchford:
"In addition, previous studies have shown that parents who used the
baby-led approach to weaning are less controlling and more willing to
hand control over to the child when introducing solid foods. Future
research needs to address the contribution of this factor into any
effect of weaning method on food preferences."

From the very limited amount of research into how parents introduce
complementary feeding, also conducted in the UK, it appears that
children whose mothers primarily followed specific advice given by
their health visitors had a diet that deviated more from current UK
recommendations than did children whose parents were practicing some
variant of 'baby-led weaning' on their own.  It is highly problematic
that those following the advice provided by a trusted part of the
public health system reported more anxiety about their childrens'
eating, and less confidence or enjoyment in the introduction of solids
than parents who on their own went outside the system and achieved a
diet more in line with what that same system purports to advocate as
the recommended diet for children.

The authors of the current article report a signficant difference in
duration of breastfeeding between the groups, despite both of them
having an initiation rate of about 90%.  The spoon-fed children were
breastfed for an average of a little less than 10 months - still
higher than the national average if I'm not mistaken.  The self-fed
children were breastfed for an averge of nearly 24 months.  I wonder
how many health visitors make the connection between active
introduction of solids administered by the parents, and premature
cessation of breastfeeding.  Here I don't think it even makes it onto
their radar, and where I live it is generally assumed that a child who
is still breastfed at age one, will be having one or two breastfeeding
episodes in 24 hours and in that same period eating two or three
servings of iron-fortified cereal, one serving of pureed 'dinner' and
perhaps being allowed to have a slice of bread with something spread
on it instead of the third portion of cereal.  Parents are lectured
about the importance of giving fruits and vegetables as well, to
foster 'good habits' but they are given absolutely no advice on making
such foods accessible for a baby besides serving them as commercially
prepared purees.

Since the system of health visitors in Norway and in the UK reaches
virtually every family, perhaps it's time we used the potential for
affecting long-term health if the quality of dietary advice was
better. Here in Norway we could start by insisting that health
visitors show proof of updated knowledge on infant and young child
feeding provided by someone other than the baby food industry.  It's
my impression that there is better awareness in the UK of the pitfalls
of letting industry do such updates than there is here.

Rachel Myr, weary from a decade of trying to support mothers to
sustain breastfeeding through the first year of the child's life in
the face of insistence by health visitors that 'solids' are more
important from 182.5 days onward, in Kristiansand, Norway

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