After your baby's birth, you are often puzzled how to treat your baby in the best possible way for your new born child to grow healthy and happy. The choice of products offered for the baby is overwhelming, and making a decision on what to buy may even be harder than caring the child. Your selection of products should not be based on a famous brand or a price tag, but what the actual benefit of its functions and what will suits your baby. Before you buy another baby food jar, or another bubbly soap, find out what's inside.
At 4-6 months of age, babies open a whole new world of tastes and textures and are ready to start mouthing and chewing "solid food”. This is the golden period when you can start introducing new products. It is best to choose the most natural foods as your baby will develop love for the flavors and will actually prefer them in the future.
It is true that commercial baby food is convenient, but the price tag for convenience may be too high - the health of your rapidly growing shiny star. When you buy commercial processed foods, as natural as they may seem, they are often diluted with water and starchy fillers such as tapioca, rice flour and modified corn starch. Even the companies producing organic baby food use fillers.
What's more, most baby foods have added water, sugars, salt, and may contain trace amounts of chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. These are not essential or beneficial to your baby's diet.
Processed foods lose nutrients and livelihood of the natural ingredients put in them due to exposure to light, heat, and long storage time. A little jar of vegetable puree with a 2-year shelf life does not compare to the smell, taste, color and vitality offered by garden-fresh nature's gifts that have been steamed and mashed and served from your own kitchen.
Try avoid the introduction of these foods until your child is much older and nourish your offspring with homemade baby food that is pure and wholesome. The bright side of preparing baby food at home is that you can add herbs, combine flavors, and easily introduce new textures, making your baby's mealtime a pleasurable, gourmet experience.
Baby Nutrition - Foods to Avoid
Citrus: Introducing citrus fruits and juices before age 1 may provoke an allergic reaction, especially if allergies run in your family.
Egg whites: Your baby can eat egg yolks now, but wait a year or two before giving the protein-rich whites because she may be allergic to them.
Honey: Honey can harbor spores of Clostridium botulinum, which may lead to botulism in children. While an adult's intestinal tract is able to prevent the growth of these spores, babies and children have don't have a fully developed immunity, so the spores can grow and produce life-threatening toxins.
Peanuts and Tree nuts (like pecans and walnuts) peanut butter: Nuts and peanuts which are considered to be legumes are highly allergenic and are often not well-tolerated even by grow-ups. Rather than risk a violent allergic reaction, wait a few years before introducing these. The majority of children can start with nuts and peanuts pureed in food or in nut butters at one, but the sticky consistency can make it tough for a young child to swallow safely. Whole nuts and pieces of nuts may turn from a nourishing addition into a choking hazard.
Wheat or wheat products: Wheat is the most common grain allergen and most babies can start only tolerate it starting at 6-8 months from birth. Besides, there are plenty of better choices of complex carbohydrates - buckwheat, quinoa, spelt and oats.
Shellfish: Excluding shellfish from your baby's diet until his first birthday is a good idea since shellfish is a very common allergen. Just to be on the safe side, you may even want to wait for 3 or 4 years before you serve the first shrimp salad to your lovely kid.
Other potential food allergens: Don't rush into including corn, soy, chocolate, cow's milk or anything else your digestion and immunity can't fight. After all, if these foods don't make you feel well, how can they be beneficial to your child? You can safely nurture your baby with most pureed fruit for desserts and cereals, except citrus, cooked and mashed vegetables added to home-cooked natural cereals mixed with beans, peas, lentils. Use herbs and spices instead of salt and remember that when it comes to sugar - your baby is already sweet enough!
If you're breastfeeding, avoiding potential allergens in your own diet may help in delaying or preventing allergies in your baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment