You still see it shared: “Add rice cereal to the bottle and they’ll sleep longer.” This outdated advice dates back decades when rice cereal was pushed as a first food and even added to bedtime bottles to “fill babies up.” But research shows it simply doesn’t work, and also carries unnecessary risks. A landmark study followed 106 healthy infants over several weeks. Half were given bottles thickened with rice cereal at bedtime, while the other half had regular milk feeds. The result? There was no