Food for thought

October 16, 2008 | Print

Starting Solids

Starting solids can be as simple as spooning baked yam into our favorite mini-food processor, and as confusing as sorting through books and articles about children’s food allergies.

We rely on a few trusted sources, our intuition, and our babies’ cues. We check in with our pediatrician or health care provider too.

We start solids slowly, paying attention to our child’s interest. We don’t worry about which foods they eat or how much. In the beginning, babies are discovering how it feels to eat as much as they’re enjoying the taste. Breastfeeding or formula remain their primary nutrient source. We tend to look for signs of interest in food around six or seven months, some of our children didn’t open their mouths for brown rice cereal with a dab of prune juice until they turned nine months old.

For details about how to start solids and make purees, we rely on Super Baby Food and Weelicious. Kelly talks about her approach in Oliver’s First Foods.

We read the starting solids and allergy information in The New Breastfeeding Diet Plan and Feeding Your Child for Lifelong Health, which identifies foods to avoid until certain ages (like no honey before one year old because of botulism risk). We also review the common allergens and signs of food allergy so we’re prepared. The usual advice is to try the same food for a few consecutive days before introducing a new one.

Our food list for babies:

Under nine months or just starting solids: We take it slow. If they resist, we listen.

First foods: Sweet potatoes, yams, and brown rice cereal with a dab of prune juice to prevent constipation.

If the child has no allergic reactions and enjoys eating, we slowly add a minimal amount of fruits. Even when we’re adding fruits, we always give more veggies than fruits for babies under nine months.

Second foods: Pears, then bananas, apples.

Third foods: Squash, peas, mango, papaya.

Nine months: Many nine month olds still like pureed food that is fed to them, but lots of babies start enjoying food they can pick up themselves. We offer soft foods cut into small pieces. At this age, the kind of food they like is trial and error. They’re developing their taste buds and exploring.

We find if they ignore broccoli, a few weeks later they’re willing to eat it.

Foods: Same as above and adding avocado, oatmeal, soak raisins overnight and mix the juice in cereal (great for iron), quinoa flakes with crushed nori, spinach, chard, oatios, boiled chicken in tiny cubes or pureed, vegetable baby broth (broccoli, cauliflower, chard, and carrots cooked for an hour, then we cool it and pour into a bottle), pureed beets, lentils, red beans, kidneys with brown rice cereal pureed together.

One year: Babies interests and abilities change daily, and their food needs grow as well. Eggs and cheese are safe at this age, but we introduce these foods slowly to see how our babies react.

Foods: Goat cheese in small cubes, small meatballs, guacamole, turkey meatloaf, eggs in any style they like, Applegate Farms chicken and apple sausage, sheets of toasted nori, yogurt with berries, roasted butternut squash, vanilla shake (bananas, rice milk, vanilla, small amount of ground flax seeds), berries, peeled fruits, squash and quinoa flakes, brown rice pasta cut in small bites with pureed spinach and olive oil, hummus, Dehydrated Fruit Leather (see Super Baby Food), soft beans, oven baked french fries (cut sweet potatoes or yams, mix with olive oil and bake), salmon cooked in vegetable broth, wheat-free and low sugar cookies, millet rice bread with berry puree on top, smoothies (handy for hiding probiotics or other vitamins and oils we’re trying to get them to eat).

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