Growing Babies And Solid Food

Baby food is very convenient but it will never be a substitute for real food when your little one is starting to grow.  For children aged 7 to 12 months, a strict diet of baby food can lead to sustained eating problems as they grow even older.

Growing babies need to receive the textural stimulation available from solid food if they’re going to learn how to chew and swallow properly.  Baby food doesn’t quite have what it takes to help them learn it – and the little ones can end up depending on the soft and easy-to-go-down bottled preparations longer than they should be.

When starting babies on solid food, it’s important to choose nutritious meals and snacks.  They don’t have a lot of space to fill and as such can only consume small amounts of anything you prepare.  If your baby needs to gain weight, opting for nutrient-filled servings becomes all the more important.  The more healthy ingredients they can take away from those small portions, the more their tiny little frames can develop.

As a guideline, each meal should see one baby-sized serving of a protein rich ingredient, one serving of food from grains, one from dairy and two from either fruits or vegetables.  If you can’t get all that in one cooking, you can supplement what was missing with similarly-healthy snacks in between their regular feeding.

For protein, small slices of chicken, beef, liver and fish cooked over a frying pan will do.  Boiled eggs and tofu chunks, both similarly easy to prepare and sliced for easy consumption, should work great as well.  For dairy, you can give them grated cheeses, yogurt and cream cheese.  For grains, you can start them on slices of bread, pancakes, small pieces of pasta and baby cereal.  Ripe and peeled fruits like mangoes, bananas and melons are almost always a hit for little taste buds.  With vegetables, make sure to start them on cooked items first before letting them try grated raw ones like carrots and cucumber sticks.

Babies aren’t too fussy with what they eat and should be welcoming of a wide range of tastes. Vary what you give them so they grow more tolerant of a broader range of foods.  They aren’t going to appreciate fancy dishes so keep preparations simple, preserving the actual taste of the food rather than masking it in a whole host of flavorings.