What Are the Best Foods to Give Babies?
There are nearly as many ways to approach feeding as there are babies. That is to say that there is no singular “right way” to feed all babies. I did some research on the topic when my baby was 3-4 months old in preparation for feeding her so I could feel like I set us up well for the adventure of feeding solid foods. I wanted to know what would be best for our situation and priorities. As always, take what works for you and forget the rest!
Click on the image below to see the YouTube video.
Baby-led Weaning
What is baby-led weaning (or BLW)? It’s a form of feeding infants that allows them to 1) feed themselves, 2) eat whole (i.e. un-pureed) foods, and 3) control how much they eat on their own. It’s been around forever, but it’s become trendy again. Of course, that is not enough of a reason to think you should do it if it doesn’t align with your values or work for your family.
There’s controversy over whether you should start with handheld solids like the traditional BLW method advocates or use purees, which is what I grew up thinking was standard (even up to a few years ago).
There are a lot of benefits to baby-led weaning, such as:
Food prep is easier because there’s no pureeing involved.
It saves time because babies feed themselves.
Everyone gets to eat together at the table.
Babies learn to manage different shapes and textures of food.
Babies develop greater fine motor skills by learning to grasp food and move it to their mouths.
There are a variety of foods that one could start with (just like with purees), but some foods lend themselves more easily to this method, including:
bananas
avocados
sweet potato
toasted bread
pears and peaches
poultry
soft cooked carrots, green beans, zucchini
Why I Avoid Infant Cereals
Infant cereals are a staple. Go through any grocery store, and you’ll see cartons and boxes lining the shelves, along with jars and pouches of pre-made baby food. There are multiple reasons why I chose to skip the infant cereals for my baby.
Rice can be high in arsenic. I recognize that all of our foods can come into contact with dangerous chemicals, additives, and other elements. Additionally, we’re exposed to things in the air we breathe and water we drink. I’m not naive enough to think that just skipping one food product would fix that. However, rice cereals are a large concern in this area. (The FDA does say that rice cereals are safe for infants in small amounts.)
Infant cereals are bland. That makes them rather unappetizing, and they also won’t teach a baby to explore more robust flavors later on. I prefer whole foods, wide varieties of nutrients, and a colorful plate. In wanting to set my daughter up to be an adventurous eater, it didn’t make sense to start her with something so bland.
They’re highly processed. This means that they’re easier to digest, which sounds like a good thing, until you consider the fact that it causes a spike in blood sugar because it’s processed too quickly and doesn’t leave a baby’s body with a sustained form of energy.
It’s one more thing to purchase and pay attention to our stock of. I’d rather focus on getting foods that our whole family can eat (even though we prepare adult and baby food differently) than having one more thing to check the inventory of and restock regularly.
Homemade Purees
Why not store-bought purees? They’re a lot more expensive (just like all convenience foods). They also are less fresh because they’ve been sitting on grocery store shelves for who knows how long. If you make your own, you can include fresh foods (even if you use frozen produce), and it costs less per ounce (even if you use organic foods).
Homemade purees really aren’t that difficult, especially once you get a couple under your belt. I have a book I find extremely helpful (The Big Book of Organic Baby Food), and this video from Health Nut Nutrition was informative, too.
Essentially, you’ll soften a food (roasting or steaming are common methods) and then blend it with some liquid (water, breast milk).
You only need a very small portion at first, so a little food goes a long way! I blended one steamed pear with a couple ounces of breast milk and got four generous servings for our little girl.
If you bulk prep foods, it will take even less time! You can get some veggies and fruits roasting and steam others at the same time, and then just rotate items in your blender to puree them. Just make sure you label them so you can keep them straight! Carrots and sweet potatoes (and peas and broccoli) look the same without labels.
What We Decided to Do
With so many options out there, each family has the opportunity to choose what’s going to work best for them based on their values and situation.
I wanted to teach our daughter to respect hunger and fullness cues, feed herself, try a wide variety of foods, and love food. It’s important to me to feed her high-quality and nutrient-dense foods and avoid processed food, especially those with added sugar.
Initially, I was planning to skip purees altogether and go straight for finger foods in the baby-led weaning style. It seemed the easiest in terms of prepping food and introducing her to food that resembles what we already eat. But after doing some more research and considering the developmental stage my daughter was in at 6 months when we wanted to start solids, it actually made more sense to use some homemade purees first.
I took a bit of a hybrid approach, making homemade purees and offering some whole foods at the same time. For instance, I made pureed broccoli and gave her a couple steamed spears of broccoli, too. This way, I could serve her multiple textures to help her explore the food without worrying about exposing her to too many foods at once (a small concern when you’re starting out, since if baby reacts to a food, it’s helpful to know which food caused the reaction).
My approach was inspired by Nikole at Health Nut Nutrition, who wrote on her website (linked in the resources for the 6-8 month meal plan):
I think there’s a lot of pressure right now to do baby led weaning because it’s ‘trendy’. But did you know that you can puree food and still have it count as baby led weaning? The point of baby led weaning is to allow your child to feed themselves, and that’s exactly what we do. We’ll puree or mash up Sage’s food and then preload her utensils that she can use to feed herself. Be warned, it’s super messy! But she loves it and has a really great relationship with food so far. Let’s hope this stays like this!
It’s been helpful to have both pureed and whole food options available for our daughter. She tends to be more interested in the whole foods because they look like the foods that mama and daddy eat. However, she doesn’t have the fine motor skills developed enough yet to grasp small pieces of food, and large ones are sometimes unsafe (aka choking hazards), so she gets frustrated trying to pick them up. This is when it has been helpful to puree foods. We try to let her hold her own spoon, but it often means we have to scoop the food onto it first, and sometimes hold the spoon in front of her mouth and let her move her mouth to it to eat the food. It’s really an experiment.
Practicing patience
No matter what route you take to feeding your baby solid foods, it’s an exercise in patience and perspective. Your little one is learning a huge new skill, and he or she may not have all the physical skills down yet to make it a smooth process. Grasping a spoon, rotating a wrist, coordinating movement to the mouth, sucking or licking the food off, moving the food to the back of the mouth, chewing if required, and swallowing are all complex parts of the whole, and it takes time to learn them all.
My husband and I keep repeating to ourselves (and those who ask) that our daughter is learning about food. She’s tasting things, even if they come back out of her mouth. Every time she gets her spoon to her mouth in the right direction, we’re happy. When she sticks her hands in her food, we’re glad she is curious about it. When she puts something in her mouth and it miraculously doesn’t come right back out, we’re proud of her for learning how to swallow. It’s a slow learning process, not a race.
equipment
You probably have most of the tools you’ll need in your kitchen already, but here are some helpful ones we use to make food for our baby.
A steamer basket is helpful for cooking foods to either gnaw on whole (like big broccoli stems) or blend into a puree (broccoli, cauliflower, chicken, zucchini…).
A good high-powered blender or food processor is a great tool to get your food pureed without too much elbow grease, though some foods could be mashed with a fork instead (like avocado, banana, sweet potato). We’ve had this set for several years, and it’s still going strong!
Some sort of containers will come in handy. We opted for a silicone ice cube tray with large compartments and a lid to freeze purees and small glass jars with screw-on lids for the fridge.
You’ll also want baby dishes and utensils, unless you have ones in your kitchen already that will work. We opted for silicone ones because they’re microwave and dishwasher safe while also free from the chemicals in traditional plastics, and they’re not breakable either.
References:
The Big Book of Organic Baby Food by Stephanie Middleberg
6-8 Month Old Meal Plan from Health Nut Nutrition
Baby Food Resources I’ve Been Loving from Health Nut Nutrition
How to Do Baby-Led Weaning from Mama Natural
When Can Babies Have Yogurt? from Mama Natural
Why I’m Waiting to Do Baby-Led Weaning from Mama Natural
First Foods for Baby from Yummy Toddler Food
Is Rice Cereal Safe for Babies? from Happiest Baby
Can I Skip Rice Cereal? Dangers of Rice Cereal for Babies from Evidence Based Mommy
The Dark Truth About Baby Cereal from Oh Baby
Tinyhood’s Baby Led Weaning class can be found in the catalog here
