You think, at first, that it must be a hoax, or a satirical post. But you read on, and you discover it’s true. It should be. It’s under the CNN masthead. But why on Earth are some parents feeding their babies pure butter – and some in large amounts?
It’s apparently a Tik Tok thing. Videos of parents handing their infants and toddlers everything from pats to full sticks of butter in an effort to quell the little ones’ incessant howlings for sustenance…
Others outraged
Other parents commenting on the vids are outraged at the apparent dietary abomination. After all, giving kids straight butter goes against all the standard medical advice new Moms are given. And it’s bound to make them sick…
Maybe not!
According to CNN, these parents are partially right — due to the intense energy demands of develop-mental growth during infancy, saturated fat guidelines for babies vastly differ from those for adults.
“Babies’ reliance on breast milk or formula is the primary example of the importance of fat in their diet, with fat accounting for about 50 percent of the calories in both substances,” said Amy Reed, a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist in Cincinnati, and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
And Reed is not alone in her opinion.
“It’s not surprising to me that parents will try all sorts of foods with their children. But giving a baby a whole stick of butter as a food or as a meal is not really in balance in a nutritious meal,” said Dr. Molly O’Shea, a Pediatrician in Bloomfield, Michigan, and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
However, “butter needs to be thought about as any other food and in balance with all the other nutrients a child needs,” O’Shea adds.
Questionable claims?
Parents who dose their babies with butter say they do it for a number of reasons. One Tik Tokker says, in her video, that her child never slept all the way through the night until she gave him a big blob of butter at bedtime. Another says a spoonful or two of butter keeps her little one full – and content – until the next scheduled feeding time.
That would be enough of an incentive for me, as a new Mom, to try the ‘butter pacifier’ thing…
Strict limits
The Tik Tokkers do place limits on their ‘butter therapy’ campaigns. Most of them agree that you should only feed infants and toddlers butter between two months and 2 years of age. Dieticians and prediatricians seem to agree with that. Reed notes, there is a valid, “function for fats at that age, particularly with brain development and growth.”
And butter-for-babies boosters point out there’s no official limit on how much butter they can feed.
May interfere with normal development
O’Shea and Reed both point out that the ages during which the Tik Tokkers are feeding their kids large amounts of butter is the same developmental period during which children are seguing to solid food. They say that’s a critical point at which kids are should be exposed to a wide variety of new food experiences, developing healthy eating habits to last their lifetimes.
Could be ‘habit-forming’
“Would you want your 7-year-old to be eating chunks of butter?” Reed asks, pointedly. “I would say, ‘No, I wouldn’t want that to be a snack.’ So, if you’re going to do that liberally until they’re age 2, and then all of a sudden cut it off, you kind of created a habit at that point.”
My take
Call me ‘old school’. I freely admit it. But I’m also a champion of common sense, and folks taking responsibility for the consequences of their decisions and actions.
I think someone on Tik Tok discovered – perhaps out of desperation – that a blob of butter would calm down their fussy kid. And others, after seeing the resulting video, discovered the ‘hack’ worked. But at what cost?
It’s seems to be a matter of convenience for the parent(s), really. Making the welfare of the child – immediate and long-term – a secondary consideration.
And as such, I condemn the practice of giving an infant or toddler unlimited amounts of butter as an example of neglectful parenting.
~ Maggie J.