ABSTRACT
The working title of our study is ‘Food choices made by mothers on behalf of infants and young children’. As such, it reflects the overall objective of the ESRC programme which was to answer the question ‘Why do people eat what they do?’ The food choices referred to in our title are decisions about what someone else will eat. Ultimately, adults decide whether to offer or withhold food from babies. Babies may contribute to such decisions, but their contributions are largely negative. They may express dissatisfaction, or refuse to eat what is offered, but their awareness of alternatives is constrained by what is made available. Hence, while babies may decide what is eaten, it is adults, usually mothers, who decide what is offered. The focus of this study is, therefore, on the proxy decisions made by mothers about what, when and how their babies are fed.
