This is an unedited excerpt from my 2nd book, "What to Know Before Having Your Baby" - coming out in February of 2017.
Because infants begin their life on breast milk,
parents often think that milk is essential for their child’s diet even beyond
the first year of life. While milk is
absolutely important for the first few months of life, once babies can start
eating solids, the value of milk (breast, formula, or cow’s) quickly diminishes. Milk’s main purpose is for humans (and
animals) to provide an easy source of nutrition to their babies until they are
ready for solid foods – which offer a far greater diversity of nutrition.
By one year of age, the bulk of a child’s nutrition should
be from solid foods – ideally they should be eating a well-balanced diet pulling
from all of the food groups. At a maximum,
a one year old should be taking no more than 24 oz of milk or formula, and as
long as they are eating a balanced diet, there really is no minimum amount of milk
that a one year old needs. And though
milk does offer vitamin D and calcium – you can get plenty of vitamin D from
the sun and all the calcium you need from meat, certain vegetables, soy, nuts,
beans and other solid foods.
Solid food introduction can begin anywhere between 4
to 6 months of age. Traditionally,
parents in the U.S. start with cereal, move to fruits & vegetables, and
add meats as the last food group.
However, many experts now recommend reversing that order as meats are
the most nutritious in vitamins and minerals and cereals are mostly filler
foods with the least amount of nutrition.
Regardless of the order, by 8 to 9 months of life at the latest, babies
should be eating from every food group, and ideally the sooner the better.
Past concerns about causing food allergies led to a
very conservative approach to introducing solid foods. Recommendations were to
give only one new food every 3 days and certain foods such as peanuts and eggs
were to be avoided until several years of age.
New data has clearly shown that this thinking was incorrect and it is now
known that early introduction of foods (particularly highly allergenic foods)
is helpful and reduces the risk of food allergies in the future. Outside of honey, which can cause botulism,
all other foods are safe to eat for babies as long as parents are careful of
choking hazards.
As for the “one new food every 3 day rule” – although
this rule might help figure out what food caused an allergy by making the
process of elimination easier, most kids with true allergies will have to
undergo a series of tests if a true food allergy is suspected, thus making this
rule unnecessary and a bit overly restrictive.
It is perfectly reasonable and definitely easier to be aggressive and
introduce several new foods at a time.
While there is a whole line of baby foods available at
the supermarket, feel free to offer bite size portions of soft foods that
parents eat for their own meals. Foods
such as pastas, baked potatoes, soft meats, and steamed vegetables are all
safe, nutritious, and tasty for babies to consume as soon as they can chew well. The more flavors children encounter early on,
the less picky they will be later!
So go ahead and give them a bite of your dinner –
they’re probably eyeing you as you eat it and wondering where their portion
is! As long as you can mash a food
between your pointer finger and thumb, even with no teeth, baby’s gums are
powerful and can handle it. The sooner
they are eating real foods, the sooner you can cook one meal and make your life
easier. And ultimately if it is
nutritious for you, it is nutritious for them.
So how should you incorporate the solid
foods into your current feeding schedule? The truth is there is no singular best way, but here is one method of doing it. Pick one meal to
begin with such as the feeding closest to breakfast time. Before giving
formula or breast milk, start by allowing your baby to eat as much solid food
as they will take. When they will no longer take any more solids, top
them off with their normal bottle or breastfeeding until they are full.
Once they seem to have the hang of one meal, add a second around
lunchtime, and soon thereafter a third around dinnertime. It is that
simple!
Some simple rules of thumb with feeding:
1.
You are in charge of the quality of food, the child is
in charge of the quantity of the food. They will never shortchange themselves!
2.
Aim for a balanced diet over a week at a time. Not every day
and certainly not every meal needs to be perfectly balanced. It all goes to same place!
3.
A child’s growth controls their appetite, not the
other way around. Your kids will grow in spurts controlled by
their hormones and appetite will follow accordingly. Again, they will never shortchange
themselves!
Ideally, your child should be eating 3 solid food
meals a day covering all of the different food groups by 8 to 9 months of
life. And by one year of age, children
should essentially be eating what their parents are eating. The bottom line is there is a lot of freedom
in how to start solids. Try lots of
different foods and have some fun with it!
