To begin the exciting milestone in your child's life – her first taste of solid food – you might cover the floor, put a big bib on Baby and set up the video camera. But beyond the initial preparations, there's a big decision to be made for something that will have a lasting payoff: When and how should solids first be introduced to your child's diet?

"The time frames for introducing solid foods to a baby's diet have evolved over the past several decades," says Patsy Rethore, an early childhood specialist and senior program manager at Southwest Human Development, a nonprofit organization and Arizona's largest provider of services for young children and their families. "Based on current research of infant health and development, it is typically recommended that solid foods be introduced between 4 and 6 months of age," she says.

Indeed, according to a study that appeared in the June 2006 issue of Pediatrics, children who were first exposed to cereals after 6 months of age had an increased risk of wheat allergy compared to children first exposed to cereals between 4 and 6 months of age. A parent or sibling with asthma, eczema or hives was also independently associated with an increased risk of wheat allergy development. In addition, one of the study's authors, Dr. Jill Poole, who works in the department of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, says previous studies also have shown that the risk of developing autoantibodies for diabetes and celiac disease (gluten intolerance) is greatly decreased by introducing cereal grains between 4 and 6 months.

The study doesn't have an answer for why, but its authors speculate that perhaps the developing infant needs to be introduced to food, and in particular, cereal grains, earlier in order for the gut mucosal immune system to become tolerant to the protein. "If introduced too soon, the infant will react, and if introduced too late, the infant's immune system overreacts," Dr. Poole says.

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