Baby Food Chart » Solid Food

Making Your Own Baby Foods

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:47:15 +0000

Preparing home made baby foods is not as difficult as it looks. The good part of preparing your own baby food is that you can control what ingredients that go in. Besides, you can include limitless variety of flavor and texture in the home-prepared baby foods.

When it comes to making your own baby foods, the following tools can be handy.

A food processor or handheld blender
A wire sieve
A potato masher
Ice-cube trays
Freezer bags

Preparing Homemade Fruits or Vegetables

Most of the ripe fresh fruits, such as banana, avocado, mango, pear and melon, can be served once they are pureed or mashed. You do not need to cook them. Unlike ripe fresh fruits, you need to cook the vegetables before you pureed or mashed them. Here are the steps that will guide you on how to prepare your homemade fruits and vegetables for your baby:

Before you cook your fruits and vegetables, make sure you clean them properly. Peel, seed and slice them once they are clean.
Place the sliced fruits and vegetables in a small saucepan and cover them with water.
Cook the fruits and vegetables until tender.
Drain and reserving the cooking liquid.
Puree the fruits and vegetables until smooth, or mash using potato masher for a lumpier consistency. Add water or cooking liquid if needed.
Place in ice-cube trays and freeze. Transfer individual cubes to freezer bags.

Preparing Homemade Meat

Place a piece of meat in the saucepan. Cover the meat with water and bring it to boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer until the meat is tender.
Drain and reserving the broth. Remove the skins and bone from meat.
Puree the meat until it is smooth using a food processor. Adding the broth or water as need to achieve desired consistency. You can use wire strainer to achieve a smooth texture.
Place in ice-cube trays and freeze. Transfer individual cubes to freezer bags.

Pureed baby food can be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months. When you need to use the food, defrost the frozen baby food overnight in the refrigerator or in a container of warm water.

When preparing your baby food at home, please avoid adding sugar, salt or honey.

Types of Solid Foods

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:43:07 +0000

Solid foods must be introduced gradually. During the initial transition period, breast milk or formula will continue to be your baby’s primary source of nutrition. As you introduce more solid foods, your child’s intake of breast milk or formula will decrease accordingly. Once they have learned how to swallow solids, the solid food will provide a nutritional complement to his liquid diet.

The chart below shows different types of solid food (in order of introduction)

Foods	Birth to 6 Months	6-9 Months	9-12 Months
Breat Milk Formula	Feed on cue Bottle feeding on demand.	Feed on cue Bottle feeding on demand.	Feed on cue Bottle feeding on demand.
Iron-fortified single-ingredient food	NONE	Iron-fortified infant cereal (2-4 tbsp / 25-60 ml twice per day)	Continue with variety of cereals
Vegetables	NONE	Pureed or mashed cooked vegetables of all color. (4-6 tbsp / 60-90 ml per day)	Mashed or diced cooked vegetables (6-10 tbsp / 90-150 ml per day)
Fruits	NONE	Pureed or mashed cooked fruits or very ripe mashed fruit.. (6-7 tbsp / 90-105 ml per day)	Soft peel, diced fresh or canned fruits. (7-10 tbsp / 105-150 ml per day)
Grains	NONE	Dried toast or unsalted crackers	Cereals, bread, rice and pasta (8-10 tbsp / 120-150 ml per day)
Meat and alternatives	NONE	Mashed or strained meat, fish or poultry, mashed silken tofu, well cooked legumes or egg yorks (1-3 tbsp / 15-45 ml per day)	Minced or diced cooked meat such as fish or chicken. Tofu, beans or egg yorks could be included. (3-4 tbsp / 45-60 ml per day)
Milk products and milk	NONE	Plain yogurt, cottage cheese or grated cheese (1-2 tbsp / 15-30 ml per day)	Diced/grated cheese, yogurt (2-4 tbsp / 25-60 ml per day)

Note:

Please avoid honey, added sugar and salt.

Please consult your physician about when to start nut products.

Introducing Solid Foods

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:39:12 +0000

Solid foods mark a tremendous milestone for your baby and for you. It’s likely you have a photo or two of your first bites of cereal and you will soon have a page in your album dedicated to your child’s. Those first few bites of solid food are exciting, but can also be confusing.

Starting Solids

Until very recently it was recommended to start solid foods between four and six months of age. Now it is more often recommended to start solids closer to six months. Speak to your doctor about starting solids to determine if your child is ready and if it is an appropriate time.

You can look for indications your child is ready to start solid food:

He watches you eat your food with great interest.
He can sit up with support – preferably without.
He can hold up his head.
He open his mouth wide when offered food on a spoon.
He uses his lips to remove food from the spoon.
He turns his head away from food when he is full or disinterested.
He has lost the tongue-thrust reaction which pushes food back out of the mouth.
He can chew on his gums.
He seems to be hungrier more often for an ongoing amount of time.

You should start solids when your baby is ready, which might not be until closer to eight months, and not because you think solids are necessary for any other reason. Solid foods have not been shown to help babies sleep better. They also are not required because a baby is larger or smaller than average. The nutrition in formula and breast milk is enough to meet the dietary demands of a baby until eight or nine months, so there is not a nutritional reason to start solid before your child is ready.

The Solid Food Progression

Your child will work his way into solids by starting with just a few tastes of one item. The first item often given to babies is rice cereal. The rice should be mixed with formula or breast milk and should be just above runny in consistency. You don’t want to feed a thick spoonful to your child. Let your child practice with the rice cereal for three to five days before moving on. Rice is used because rice is not linked to many allergies.

You can introduce foods in any order, but meat and dairy product should be avoided until baby is closer to a year in age. Most parents opt to start with various grains followed by fruits and vegetables. You should wait three to five days after each new item to be sure your baby doesn’t have sensitivity to an item. Most food sensitivities at this age are resolved naturally as your child grows. If she does react, put that food aside for now and try again in a few months or a year. It will take months to make it through all the possibilities in grains, fruits and vegetables. When possible avoid using combination meals in baby food jars as these often contain filler items and are not as nationally sound as the straight fruit or vegetable.

You can make your own baby foods by pureeing cooked items with water to reach the right consistency. As your baby learns to chew and swallow more effectively you can increase the texture of the foods until you reach a mashed state – this is the ideal time to move to table foods.

Table Foods

Around nine months to a year your child will be ready for the same foods you’re eating at mealtimes with some exceptions. Avoid foods that are hard to chew, such as meat, as your baby is still forming teeth. You should also avoid foods that have a high risk of choking such as uncut grapes or hot dogs, popcorn, hard candy and peanut butter. Finally, delay the introduction to potentially allergenic foods until the first or possibly second year. These include strawberries, egg white, chocolate, nuts and honey – which is a health concern as well.