Baby Nutrition Care

Generally, cheese is not only safe, but is a healthy food for babies.  It’s packed with calcium and is a great source for vitamins A, D and B12.  For vegetarian families raising children on a meatless diet, cheese can prove a great alternative source for vitamin B12, a nutrient commonly derived from meat sources.

Babies like it too.  Most cheese products come with a rich and full flavor, allowing it to be incorporated into many tasty meals.  Even better, it’s very easy to prepare.  You can:

• cut up firm cheeses and serve as finger food or mix them into meals
• grate it and stir into rice, pasta, soups, cereals and other dishes
• grill it and serve with bread
• mash it and mix with fruit purees like avocado
• incorporate when baking soft snacks like cookies and muffins

Most babies should be able to handle cheese made from pasteurized milk as early as the sixth month.  If a history of dairy allergy is present in your family, however, make sure to consult your child’s pediatrician first.  Bear in mind, though, that cheese is usually free from the milk protein that causes dairy allergy so it might not even be that big a concern.

Great cheeses you may want to consider for your baby’s diet includes swiss cheese, cheddar, parmesan, romano, colby, mozzarella, cream cheese, cottage cheese and romano.   Heavily processed cheese products found in groceries, while fine, usually has plenty of emulsifiers, additives and enhancers.  During their early years, it might be best to focus their diet on full-flavored “real” cheeses.

I’ve heard some parents claim soy products are better for babies than similar ones made from milk and dairy.  Some, however, claim otherwise, insisting that soy will only help stimulate increased growth of fat cells.  When it comes to this argument, neither parent is wrong nor right.

Formulas based on either of the two should provide comparable nutritional value, making an argument on each other’s merits a difficult proposition.  In general, though, baby formula based on dairy is recommended by more pediatricians for its closer similarity to breast milk.  A soy-based formula is usually prescribed when the baby is potentially allergic to dairy or suffers from lactose intolerance.

The biggest difference in the composition of soy, which is often cited as the main reason to avoid it, are compounds called phytoestrogens.  Many researches are currently being done on its effects on babies and it is frequently the subject of hot debate.

Milk generally has a higher quality of protein than soy, apart from naturally containing calcium. Save for those differences, however, all their nutrient contents – whether fat, carbohydrates, calcium, calories, cholesterol or vitamins – are usually the same.

So which one is better?  Personally, I would go with dairy although there is absolutely nothing wrong, as far as science can tell, from soy-based baby products as well.  Thousands upon thousands (maybe millions even) of healthy children have been raised on either of the two.

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.