Carbohydrate foods for babies

Feeding your baby (aged nine months to a year)

Babies are usually happy to try new tastes and textures, so you can give them a wide range of family foods at this stage – but remember not to put salt in your cooking.

Covid-19 guidance for pregnant women and information on what is happening in their regional unit can be found on NI Maternity

Types of food

After nine months you can begin to offer your child:

Minced food, rather than mashed
Harder finger food, such as raw vegetables

If you give them dairy products, make sure they are the full-fat varieties. Cutting back on fat is sensible for adults, but not for babies as they need more energy for growth.

Also, try not to encourage a sweet tooth by giving them biscuits and cakes as these will fill up your baby without providing any nutrients.

Meals

Your baby should be having a good mixed diet by now with probably three or four meals a day.

Your baby’s diet should contain:

starchy foods at every meal, like potatoes, rice, bread, pasta and plantain
fruit or vegetables at each meal
one or two servings of meat, fish, eggs or pulses (beans or lentils) a day

This is a good time to introduce two course meals.

Ideally these would be a:

savoury first course of starchy food like meat, fish or pulses with vegetables
second course of milk, fruit or both

Healthy eating for different ages and stages

Drinks

You will find that as your baby eats more solid foods, the amount of milk your baby wants will start to reduce. Once your baby is eating plenty of solids several times a day, they may go without one feed, but do continue to breastfeed or give 500-600ml (about a pint) of infant formula a day until at least 12 months of age.

Breastfeeding will continue to benefit you and your baby. As you introduce drinks, water with meals for instance, always use cups rather than bottles.

You should avoid using anything with a teat. If your child spends too long with a teat in their mouth it may damage their teeth and delay speech development. At this stage, water doesn’t have to be boiled unless you are using it to make up formula milk.

Diluted fruit juice can also be used if it is well diluted (one part juice to 10 parts water).

Cow’s milk

Remember that cow’s milk must not be given as a drink until your baby is one year old, however, it can be used for mixing into foods like cereal or mashed potatoes.

Getting enough iron

Babies need iron in their diet to help their brains develop normally. Pork, beef and lamb are excellent sources of iron and serving vegetables with these will help your baby to absorb it.

If you have decided you do not want your baby to eat meat or fish, make sure that you give them two servings a day of split pulses (red lentils, split peas, chickpeas) or tofu.

Fruit also helps the body absorb iron, so include this at meal times as well.

Vitamins and Healthy Start scheme

Children under five years old who are breastfeeding need vitamin drops A, C and D (children who are drinking 500ml of infant formula a day do not need these as they are already added).

If your family qualifies for the Healthy Start scheme, you can get free milk, fresh fruit and vegetables and vitamins until your child’s fourth birthday.

Free milk, fruit, vegetables and vitamins

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Infant and Toddler Carbohydrate Needs

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With so much hype around carbohydrates, many parents wonder how this nutrient should be viewed when it comes to children. Is it healthy or should it be avoided? Here’s what you need to know about the role of carbohydrates in your child’s diet, including how many your infant or toddler requires and the healthiest places to find them.

Carbohydrates are an important nutrient, especially for kids. They play a significant part in the growth and development of babies and toddlers.

Carbohydrates can be found in a wide variety of foods, some healthy and others not as healthy. Therefore, it’s important to understand which carbohydrates are best and choose the healthiest sources and amounts for your children. Ideal carbohydrate choices will also offer other important nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and fiber, whereas unhealthy carbohydrates will have little nutrition but lots of sugar.

Why Carbohydrates Matter

Carbohydrates, or carbs, are the body’s main energy source. They’re found in the highest amounts foods like grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. They’re also found in less healthy foods, such as packaged snacks made with refined grains, baked goods, and junk foods. Needless to say, most people eat more carbs than they probably need to given the wide availability of high-carb foods today.

When you eat carbs, your body breaks them down into glucose, or sugar molecules. This sugar is then used to fuel important everyday physiological functions. The same is true, of course, for babies and toddlers who have growing muscles, busy bodies, and very active brains that need lots and lots of energy. When you are burning as much energy as an active toddler, you definitely need to refuel.

Infant Carbohydrate Needs

Carbohydrates should make up around 40% of an infant’s calories. For an infant who needs approximately 800 calories per day, that’s 320 calories from carbohydrates. There are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate, so that means this infant would need 80 grams of carbs each day.

For infants, the primary source of healthy carbs will come from infant formula or breast milk, especially during the first 12 months of life.

When solid foods are introduced around 4-6 months of age, infants can get healthy carbs from things like applesauce, mashed bananas and avocado, and pureed veggies like corn, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, and beans. As their digestive tract develops, babies can be introduced to grains like quinoa, oats, rice, and even whole grain toast cut into strips.

Toddler Carbohydrate Needs

Carbohydrate needs for toddlers increase to around 55% of calories at two years old. Mostly to support the increase in activity during this time. Have you ever been around a toddler? It can be exhausting to watch them move around!

For a toddler requiring 1,100 calories per day, that’s 605 calories per day from carbohydrates. At 4 calories per gram, this comes out to approximately 150 grams of carbs per day.

Toddlers can get healthy carbs in foods like whole grain breads and grains, beans, lentils, peas, cooked veggies, canned fruit, berries, and mashed potatoes. Parents may also choose to supplement their child with a toddler formula, which will supply extra carbs along with other important nutrients for growth and development. A plant-based toddler formula like that from Else offers 19 grams of carbohydrates in a 240 ml serving made with the formula powder.

To give you an idea of how many carbs may be in plant-based foods for babies and toddlers, here are some examples:

¼ cup cooked lentils = 19 grams
¼ cup cooked quinoa = 29 grams
¼ cup cooked sweet potato = 11 grams
¼ cup pinto beans = 28 grams
1 slice whole grain toast = 19 grams
1 Tbsp peanut butter = 4 grams

Your toddler should be offered a variety of these foods, in addition to plenty of fruits and vegetables to meet their carbohydrate needs.

Toddlers also start to develop food preferences during this stage. They may naturally gravitate towards sweet foods, which may not be quite as nutritious for them. This is an important time to encourage your toddler to eat plenty of healthy carbs, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Offering these types of foods regularly will help them develop a healthier palate.

Carbohydrates are an important nutrient whether you have an infant or toddler, and healthy carbs can be found in a wide variety of plant-based foods once your child starts to wean from breast milk. Else Nutrition also offers a high quality line of plant-based formula appropriate for toddlers, which can be a great way to easily incorporate healthy carbs into your child’s diet.

The content and advice provided in this article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical diagnosis, treatment, advice for specific medical conditions. Always consult a pediatrician to understand the individual needs of your child.

Lauren Panoff ,MPH, RD

Lauren specializes in plant-based living and vegan and vegetarian diets for all ages. She also enjoys writing about parenting and a wide variety of health, environmental, and nutrition topics.

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90,000 more complex carbs and fewer sweets. 10 tips. A child eats only carbohydrates

If you also think that today's children eat too much sweets, and there is clearly not enough healthy carbohydrates in their menu, we offer simple tips that will help you gradually change your child's diet and introduce him to proper nutrition.

Why kids need complex carbohydrates

To give your kids the energy to develop and grow, you need to include plenty of complex carbohydrates in their diet. They are found in bread, potatoes, pasta and rice, so these foods should form the basis of any meal.

In general, "brown" foods (wholemeal or whole grains) are healthier than "white" foods (fine or hulled). Whole-wheat breads, pastas, and brown rice release their energy more slowly, keep you feeling full longer, and support us better between meals. But their "white" equivalents break down much faster, quickly increase blood sugar levels, which also quickly decrease. As a result, we soon feel hungry again and are ready to eat again.

So how do you teach your child to prefer foods with complex carbohydrates?

Buy the right products. Children only eat the food you bring home. So buy whole wheat bread and pasta and brown rice and feed them to your baby. If your child is still young, just give him these products from early childhood, and he will not even know that there is an alternative to complex carbohydrates.

If you need to introduce "brown" bread/rice/pasta into your older child's diet, here are some tips on how to do it successfully.

Don't focus on ingredients. The simplest thing is not to report that today you cooked brown, not white rice. It's possible your child just won't notice the difference. In fact, “brown” foods do not taste much different from “white” ones, especially when they are poured with sauce, fried and flavored with butter.

Mix with regular products. If you think your child is sensitive to these things, mix new foods with familiar foods at first. You can mix the "correct" pasta with orange and green ones so that they are all different colors. Today, even wholemeal bread looks appetizing. You can give it to a child, and after a while casually remark: "By the way, you are eating healthy bread" - and look at his reaction.

Make it the norm. Children eat what they have been taught to eat and prefer familiar foods. Don't give your child a choice, just always buy and cook "brown" foods. Then he just has to eat them. Cook these foods when his friends come to visit and eat them yourself.

Choose foods similar to those your child is used to. If your child is accustomed to sliced white bread, it will be difficult to switch in one day to dense whole grain bread with seeds, which also has to be cut. So start with sliced, seedless, whole grain bread that looks and tastes just like what your child is used to. In the same way, start with polished brown rice and only then move on to denser, unpolished rice. Use wholemeal pasta, which is similar in shape to regular pasta. The child may not even notice the change. But if he notices and refuses to eat, be persistent and continue to offer him new dishes and eat them yourself.

Provide variety. Each meal should include complex carbohydrates to provide the body with the energy it needs. But at the same time, you must make food varied. Mix potatoes, rice, pasta and bread with other foods and cook different meals every day so that these "complex carbohydrates" do not bore your child.

Should sugary foods be limited?

Children don't need sweets, cakes, cookies, or chocolate to grow and develop. If they were not in the diet at all, it would only benefit the children. Sweets are digested almost instantly and quickly increase blood sugar levels. This is useful when the child is hungry. But then blood sugar drops sharply, and the child feels hungrier than before.

But sweets exist, many children love them, and many parents love to give them to their children. So what are we to do?

Do not keep them at home. It is you who go shopping, prepare food and decide what to bring into the house and what not. If you do not keep sweets at home, the child will not beg for them from you. And you will not be tempted to use them as a way to cheer up your child or get him to obey.

Don't make sweets special. If you give your child a cookie and say, "Are you happy now?" or "This is for your good behavior," he will view the cookies as something special, as a source of joy and pleasure. If you buy a big ice cream cake, eat it with your child, and admire its taste, the child will perceive eating the cake together as a way to enjoy and feel emotional closeness with another person. Try to give your children predominantly fruit-based sweets and treat them as just another meal at the end of lunch or dinner. The main thing is not to give sweets a special status as the most delicious and desirable delicacy.

Do not make them "forbidden fruit". Do not impose a strict ban on sweets, otherwise your child will treat them as something even more desirable. Sweets exist in this world, and children love them. If you forbid them to your child, then when he grows up, food can be a way for him to rebel against you and show independence - even to the detriment of his health.

Get some order. Try to treat your child with sweets outside the home and establish a certain routine for this. For example, if you visit a pastry shop once a week, this will allow you not to turn sweets into a forbidden fruit or something special. But at the same time, it will make it possible to limit their consumption and tie them to a specific place and time. If visiting a pastry shop becomes a tradition, then you will kill three birds with one stone: and the child will receive the expected pleasure, and his food will become healthier, and you will be relieved of his annoying “I want something tasty” throughout the week.

What carbohydrates does the child need? - mama.ua

Nutritionists advise eating porridge in the morning. A plate of oatmeal or buckwheat porridge is a great carbohydrate breakfast that will provide your child with energy for the whole day! But each cereal has its own characteristics.

In order for the forces not to go away and the head to work, the child's body must regularly receive carbohydrates. True, not all of them are useful. So how do we say "yes"?

We say "ONLY YES!"

Complex carbohydrates is the most important source of pure physical and mental energy, but most importantly, lasting. While they are digested, the body will be supplied with fuel.

Where do we get it?

Record holders for the content of complex healthy carbohydrates are cereals. Kashi (buckwheat, oatmeal, rice, wheat). These are the healthiest carbohydrate foods in existence. In addition to being a source of polysaccharides, they are also rich in fiber, which is responsible for the smooth functioning of the intestines, thereby ensuring good digestibility of complex carbohydrates.

Nutritionists highly recommend preparing cereals for children in the morning. It is in the morning that the baby needs to recharge with complex carbohydrates in order to spend the whole day on the rise. And in order not to be late with breakfast, use cereals in special heat-resistant bags for cooking. TM "Zhmenka" has such. The groats have already been sorted there, additionally cleaned, and ready for cooking. No need to measure the required amount of water and make sure that it “does not run away” and does not burn. Porridge does not stick to the walls of the pan and does not burn to the bottom - after cooking, you can only rinse the pan with water!
As soon as the cereal occupies the entire volume of the bag, take it out, open it, put it on a plate and season it with whatever you like.
Each bag of TM "Zhmenka" cereals contains 50 grams of porridge - this is an ideal portion for a growing body of a child from 3 years old according to the conclusion of the sanitary and epidemiological examination of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine No. 05.03.02-04/84340 dated 17.09.2013.

We say "YES"

Glucose Neither an adult nor a child's body can survive without it. It's like fuel for cells. Phrases like “I’m tired”, “I don’t have the strength” indicate that the glucose level in the body of a small or adult has decreased.

Where do we get it?

Glucose is found in berries, fruits and vegetables. There is a lot of it in grapes, cherries, cherries and raspberries. A little less - in carrots and pumpkin.

Fructose is a light carbohydrate, but it raises blood sugar levels, although to a lesser extent than glucose. For this reason, and due to the fact that fructose enters the body without the participation of insulin, fructose can be consumed if sweets are not allowed, but you really want to.

Where do we get it?

Fruits: peaches, apricots, plums, grapes, apples, pears - everything that we can call a sweet fruit contains fructose. Therefore, if the baby misses sweets, and you do not allow it, transfer it to fruits. (Believe me, it's possible! A week - and the body weaned from cakes and gets used to sweet fruits and berries. Checked!) But don't overdo it. Remember, fructose is also a sugar.

Galactose This is a milk sugar that is formed by combining with glucose. Have you heard the word "lactose"? It is the main carbohydrate in milk and dairy products. Does it need children? Of course! But not everyone. Some babies are allergic to it. If for some reason (perhaps genetic) the child’s body lacks a special enzyme that breaks down lactose, then the child will not be able to tolerate milk.

Where do we get it?

Milk contains the most lactose. Yoghurts and sour cream are in second place.