Some parents feed their babies lots of butter for health. Why experts say they’re partially right

By Kristen Rogers, CNN

(CNN) — A woman hands her 9-month-old baby girl a pepper-dusted stick of golden grass-fed butter on a silver platter in one TikTok post. Another gives her toddler pats of butter out of “pure desperation” to keep her “always-hungry” toddler fuller longer after meals.

One of the latest TikTok trends among parents is feeding babies butter in amounts ranging from spoonfuls to whole sticks. Consuming it at this age supposedly provides benefits such as a good night’s sleep, healthy development and longer satisfaction after meals, these influencers say.

Multiple TikToks show women feeding their infants spoonfuls of butter before bed, saying that has helped their babies finally sleep up to 12 hours straight through the night. Sometimes the mother even mixes the butter into a baby’s bottle of milk. Another post claims you can give your child an unlimited amount of butter — grass-fed and unsalted, specifically — until the little one is 2 years old.

In all these videos, the tiny humans happily chow down on their butter snacks. And the posts do tend to trigger horrified reactions from other TikTok users. The backlash is rooted in longstanding scientific research and expert guidance linking high consumption of saturated fat with cardiovascular diseases — the top killer of adults worldwide.

Experts CNN interviewed, however, say these parents are partially right — due to the intense energy demands of developmental 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% of the calories in both substances, said Amy Reed, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Cincinnati and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

However, experts also noted there are other issues that a regularly high intake of butter may cause or cover up.

“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.

None of the TikTok videos reviewed for this story showed babies eating a whole stick of butter, so it’s possible their parents only gave them whole sticks since they are easier to hold, Reed said.

Still, “butter needs to be thought about as any other food and in balance with all the other nutrients a child needs,” O’Shea said.

Your baby and saturated fat

Parents are right about the fact that there is no limit on how much saturated fat a baby between ages 6 months — typically when they begin eating solid foods — and 2 years can eat. That’s because there’s a “function for fats at that age, particularly with brain development and growth,” Reed said.

The need to decrease saturated fat intake at age 2 and older is due to research indicating “that the diet at that age could lead to long-term effects of some of the chronic diseases that we see,” Reed said. “Babies aren’t growing as rapidly as they were between the ages of 0 and 2, so they don’t need their diet to be fat like they did when they were younger.”

When your baby is younger than 2 years old, the absence of a limit on butter doesn’t mean you should let them eat unlimited amounts, Reed said.

These experts generally don’t think anything’s wrong with giving your baby a tablespoon or two of butter daily. But the early phases of eating solid foods are also prime time for building exposure to a variety of healthy foods and creating healthy eating habits, O’Shea and Reed said.

“Would you want your 7-year-old to be eating chunks of butter?” Reed said. “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.”

Additionally, variety in a baby’s diet is essential for balanced nutrition, Reed said. “Yes, there are little bits of vitamin A and vitamin D in butter, but with the amount we’re supposed to have, it’s not highly contributing those vitamins, and it also doesn’t contribute much protein either, which infants and children need for growth and development.”

Therefore, even when helping parents with babies who are having trouble gaining weight, “the encouragement is that various types of fat are spread throughout the day with different foods,” Reed added. “Typically, the amounts we’re recommending might be like half a teaspoon to a teaspoon melted and added to a puree. Or as they get older, we might recommend drizzling oil or melted butter over cooked vegetables.

“We never just say, ‘Give butter by itself,’” Reed said, and it’s not the only source of fat she would recommend: Avocado, hummus and fish are other great sources of fat.

Children staying full longer after meals when they are also given butter is only natural, since its high caloric density and fat content make it more satisfying, experts said. But using butter as a tool for satiety would be problematic if it’s preventing your baby from eating other nutritious foods.

For parents who want to give their baby or toddler more butter, it’s best to incorporate it into a varied diet so they get a full range of nutrients — which are also critical for satiety — and maintain interest in the flavors and textures of other foods.

Is a bedtime butter snack OK?

To exhausted parents turning to feeding their infants butter because they are desperate for a good night’s sleep for both themselves and the baby, “I hear you,” O’Shea said. “Every parent wants their baby to sleep, and as pediatricians, we do, too.”

But when infants wake in the middle of the night for a feed, that’s normal, experts said. And the point at which they sleep through the night depends on weight, age, fullness and other factors — while that typically starts happening at around 6 or 7 months old, that’s not the case for every baby.

If you find your baby is waking during the night more frequently than usual, that may be a sign their caloric needs aren’t being met during the day, O’Shea said — another reason to ensure you’re feeding them a balanced diet instead of a bedtime snack of butter. An older infant waking up can also indicate being accustomed to middle-of-the-night feeds rather than needing them, she said.

Regardless, you should talk with your child’s pediatrician about any sleep concerns to nail down the problem, Reed said. An occasional nighttime snack for sleep may be OK, but it doesn’t have to be butter — it could be yogurt or nut butter on toast.

Infant sleep is about brain development and should be driven by that — not simply “food hacks that just make them be knocked out through the night,” Dr. Tommy Martin, a doctor of internal medicine and pediatrics said in a TikTok post commenting on the trend.

Being curious about hacks you see online to solve a problem is normal, but try raising that concern with your pediatrician instead, O’Shea said. “We’d love to talk about the pros, the cons and what the long-term implications might be, so that you can make a great decision for your family.”

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