Is baby food a healthy snack for adults


Why Adults Shouldn't Eat Baby Food

Celebrities may give this diet fad more credit than it's due, but adults should steer clear of a baby food diet for several reasons.

By Kimberly Holland February 07, 2017

Credit: Credit: Vstock LLC/Getty

Celebrities have quite the knack for causing a stir when they release their "diet secrets," and this week is no different. Today, Girls writer and star Lena Dunham posted on Instagram her "Trump Diet." Dunham, a liberal stalwart, was facetiously remarking on how difficult she's found eating since the November election. Her tone is clearly joking, but tucked in the third entry is a shout out to baby food, an infamous celebrity diet trend.

Credit: Photo: Lena Dunham/Instagram

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Indeed, several celebrities tout baby food as their secret elixir for shedding pounds. Last summer, Camila Alves credited her flat stomach to two meals of baby food each day. She eats a more sensible dinner—a protein, black beans, and vegetables —but the actress and co-founder of baby food company Yummy Spoonfuls says she supplements her nutritional needs all day with pouches of squeezable food. Designer Hedi Slimane admitted to living on a diet of baby food to keep his super-slim physique, too.

What is the baby food diet? Why is it popular?

The idea is simple: replace two meals each day with several jars (or pouches) of baby food. A jar of baby food contains between 20 and 90 calories, so sticking to a low-calorie diet will still require downing several jars of pureed goo.

Celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson gets a lot of the internet-(in)famous credit for this fad, but research reveals it's been around since the 1980s. Some advocates suggest eating about 14 jars of baby food throughout the day, then a dinner at night. Other "plans" suggest you only eat baby food. Truthfully, you won't find any hard and fast rules for the baby food diet because it's more of a myth than a medical regimen.

Can you lose weight with the baby food diet?

Absolutely. You can lose weight with just about any "diet" though, so don't give the baby food diet too much credit. In fact, it's  easy to understand why the baby food diet would be successful. You will need to eat a lot of baby food to maintain a normal calorie count each day, so if you can't keep up, you may miss your daily calorie goal. Eating fewer calories than needed for weight maintenance means you will start seeing pounds slip off. Each jar is small, so portion control isn't very difficult. And if you can stomach all the flavors (turkey and "gravy," anyone?), you also get a wide variety of flavorful options.

But with those "benefits" come a few harsh realities. You'll have to train your palate to find baby food tolerable. Many brands don't season their foods at all. A more mature palate is accustomed to salt, sugar, and fat, so removing those entirely will be quite a shock to your tongue. Likewise, adults are made to eat real food. Unlike babies, we have teeth and digestive systems that can handle chewable food.

A balance of fiber, protein, fat, and carbohydrates is essential to keeping your body running at optimal levels. If you exercise too, a diet of pureed produce is unlikely to meet your body's needs. You could soon find yourself feeling weak or worse, hangry. Meeting your daily nutritional requirements while eating two meals of pureed fruits and vegetables will be difficult, if not nearly impossible. If you use it for quick slim down prior to a big day (like a wedding or a party), know that you'll likely gain back all the weight you lost quickly once you return to solid food.

 

"Baby food is lacking adequate amounts of fiber, fat, and protein to sustain a healthy adult. This puréed, and often strained, food is created for babies with underdeveloped digestive systems," says Cooking Light assistant nutrition editor Jamie Vespa, MS, RD. "Keeping our digestive systems active by eating whole, nutrient-dense food is healthy for both our gut and our immune system. The 'baby food diet' is a gimmicky, unsustainable diet that should not be utilized by adults wishing for long-term results."

Bottom line: Like Dunham's advice to not follow her Trump Diet, we do not recommend you try the baby food diet. "It's nutritionally inadequate. I can't think of a single pro for an adult to eat baby food, unless their jaws are wired shut," Vespa says. Healthy adults should instead look to fill their plates with fiber, protein, fat, and carbohydrates and leave the jars of colorful glop to the young ones.

I Ate Baby Food for An Entire Week

I held the spoon to my mouth, and I grimaced when the contents touched my tongue — warm, mushy carrots. 

This was my 7-month-old son's dinner — and mine too. I would spend a week eating baby food, although it was less of a calculated effort and more of a desperate attempt to hang onto my sanity.

As a new mother who worked from home, I was unprepared for how difficult it would be to juggle both a job and an infant, often getting crapped on from everyone, everywhere. The laundry piled up to unbelievable heights. The dishes in the sink smelled like a homeland security threat. For myself, I did the bare minimum to erase the stink lines that followed me around like Pigpen in a Peanuts comic.

Courtesy of Maggie Downs

Something had to give, I realized. And that something was chewing.

I'm kidding. Chewing wasn't so much the issue. The problem was the time it took to make myself a separate meal. When the choice came down to cooking for my son and cooking for myself, it was an easy decision. He who sobs the loudest wins.

This sort of thing wasn't new for me, per se. I've done some crazy diets in the past. In college, I was the originator of the Beef Jerky Diet, which sprained my jaw before I ever lost any weight. (No wonder my diet never caught on.) I've been a raw foodist and I've tried juices. I've scrubbed my guts with gallons of cabbage soup and master cleansed with liters of lemonade. One time I ate nothing but raw macadamia nuts for three days. 

When my son began eating solid foods, I decided to make all his meals from scratch. I'm a person who enjoys cooking anyway, and it was important to me to provide him with fresh, healthy produce. 

When I thought about it, eating baby food wasn't a bad idea idea. After all, many of the world's most beloved foods are enjoyed in their squished form. Guacamole is perfection. Applesauce is awesome. Hummus is great. And who doesn't love mashed potatoes?

Plus, I've been enough to fancy restaurants where entrees are served atop puddles of parsnip mash or dollops of spring pea purée. This wasn't mere baby food I was creating — it was cutting-edge cuisine!

Courtesy of Maggie Downs

At first, the purées I ate were terrific, like downing super thick smoothies for every meal. And it really did save a lot of time, which otherwise would have been spent over the stove or cleaning the dishes.  The bonus was that it forced me to be more creative with the things I whipped up in the blender, because I wanted to consume delicious things too. Snap peas, pears and a banana? Tasty. Sweet potatoes, cherries and vanilla? Like a party in my mouth. Fava beans and summer squash with leeks? Eh, not the worst.

After a week of baby food; however, eating became something laborious. It was no longer interesting or enjoyable. I fantasized about crunch. Chewing felt like an old friend I only vaguely remembered. I realized I was on the diet of someone who just had his wisdom teeth pulled, but for no real reason.

That's the day I decided to reverse the process: Instead of eating what my baby eats, I would simply give him what I like to eat.

It's a strategy that has worked well for us ever since, with a food repertoire that has expanded to include soft grilled eggplant, five-bean chili, rice pudding, roasted veggies of all kinds, aloo gobi and pillows of naan.

We didn't want to be those culinary snobs who go to a restaurant and just order the parsnip purée, anyway.

Maggie Downs

Maggie Downs is a journalist and essayist based in Palm Springs, CA. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the U.S., including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and in digital media such as Today.com, Outside, Smithsonian, and the BBC. She is a traveler, a book nerd, and an accidental adventurist.

Proper nutrition of a child is a guarantee of health - Children's City Polyclinic No. 1

Every parent wants his child to grow up healthy, smart, happy.

From childhood, we must teach our children to choose from the variety of foods that are really good for health. The nutrition of children is somewhat different from the nutrition of adults. If the child's nutrition system is built correctly, then the child develops normally, both physically and mentally.

Make your family's way of life by introducing your child to proper nutrition every day. There is no need to arrange constant lectures from this on the topic of what is useful and what is harmful. By actively communicating with your child, setting an example, you instill good eating habits.

Only good things should be spoken at the table. The situation should help the child to relax, then the appetite will be good and the mood will be friendly. Children can help you with serving and decorating dishes. When serving vegetables and fruits, ask the children what vitamins and minerals they contain and why they are so useful. In order to organize the proper nutrition of the child, you need to follow several important rules:

Rule 1

Food should be varied.

This is an important condition for the child's body to receive all the substances necessary for growth and development. Every day, the child's menu should include: fruits and vegetables; meat and fish; milk and dairy products; grain products (bread, cereals, cereals). Insufficiency or excess of food consumed by a child can adversely affect the activity of the gastrointestinal tract, contribute to metabolic disorders, increase overweight (even to various degrees of obesity) or lead to malnutrition.

If the child refuses, there is a healthy dish, offer him to experiment and make the dish unusual.

So, with the help of dried fruits and nuts, you can put a funny face on porridge, use ketchup and greens to draw a pattern on scrambled eggs, put mashed potatoes on a plate in the form of a snowman figure, etc.

What should not be used in children's nutrition:

  1. Offal, except liver, tongue, heart; blood, liver, raw smoked sausages.
  2. Deep-fried foods and culinary products, chips.
  3. Curds, condensed milk with vegetable fats.
  4. Koumiss and fermented milk products containing ethanol (more than 0. 5%).
  5. Cream confectionery containing vegetable protein.
  6. First and second courses based on fast food concentrates.
  7. Vinegar, mustard, horseradish, hot peppers and other hot spices and food products containing them, including hot sauces, ketchups, mayonnaises and mayonnaise sauces.
  8. Pickled vegetables and fruits.
  9. Natural coffee and carbonated drinks, apricot kernels, peanuts.
  10. Products, including confectionery, containing alcohol.
  11. Food products containing a large amount of food additives in their composition (information is indicated by the manufacturer on consumer packaging).
  12. Dry concentrates for cooking first and second courses (soups, Dosherak vermicelli, cereals).

Rule 2

The child should eat regularly.

Compliance with the diet of children is of great importance for the absorption of nutrients by the body. Preschool children are recommended to eat 4-5 times a day, every 3 hours, at the same time, distributing the diet as follows: breakfast - 25%, lunch - 35%, afternoon snack - 15%, dinner - 25% . At school age, it is advisable to have four meals a day, every 4 hours with an even distribution of the daily ration: breakfast - 25%, second breakfast - 20%, lunch - 35%, dinner - 20%.

Try to stop snacking and teach your child to eat only at the table. If this still doesn't work, offer fruit, biscuits, juice for a snack - food that will help drown out hunger, but will not ruin your appetite.

Proper organization of meals at school in the form of hot school breakfasts and lunches is an important health-improving measure for student children in extended day groups, whose diet should be 50-70% of the daily norm, which, unfortunately, parents do not have enough are paying attention. Eating sandwiches, pizza, chips, chocolate bars is harmful because - this food is inferior in composition and also irritates the stomach, contributing to the development of gastritis.

Rule 3

A child's diet should replenish his daily energy expenditure.

If your child is overweight, limit the amount of sweets and high-calorie desserts, empty the refrigerator. Put a bowl of fruit on the table, a plate of whole grain bread. Children can eat fruits without any restrictions, it is almost impossible to overeat them, and they are very useful. With a lack of any mineral substance or vitamin, the child himself will ask for the apple or even greens he needs.

Try to get your child involved in sports, take walks together, even if little by little, but regularly.

Thus, building proper nutrition for children requires taking into account the characteristics of the child's body, knowledge of certain rules and principles of healthy nutrition.

The material was prepared by the editorial and publishing department of GBUZ JSC "CMP" - 2020

Healthy nutrition for men - proper nutrition for men for every day and week

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Healthy nutrition for men

The basic principles of a healthy lifestyle are familiar to everyone: you need to maintain a balance of nutrients, drink enough fluids and make sure that the diet has enough vitamins and minerals. But proper nutrition for men has its own characteristics, which are associated with metabolism and hormonal levels.

Features of the male diet

Male metabolism is significantly different from female due to hormones. The main one is testosterone. It is responsible for secondary sexual characteristics, regulates the metabolism of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. The male hormone is involved in the division of red blood cells and their saturation with hemoglobin. Therefore, men are less likely than women to develop anemia, and the hemoglobin rate is higher.

Testosterone influences resistance to stress, body fat distribution, muscle mass. With sufficient concentration, a man has a high libido, is sexually active and hardy. But with a decrease in the synthesis of the hormone in the testes, the entire body suffers.

Testosterone production depends on many factors, proper nutrition is one of them. Cholesterol is necessary for the normal synthesis of the hormone, so it cannot be completely excluded from the diet. But the excess of animal fats and simple carbohydrates, which lead to obesity, is also dangerous. In this case, testosterone is converted into estrogens in adipose tissue - female sex hormones that strike at potency.

Male features include increased metabolism. Therefore, it is easier for them than women to lose weight, but they require more calories, vitamins and minerals to maintain health. The need is influenced by the age and occupation of the man. Approximately with an inactive lifestyle, the following amount of energy is needed:

  • 18-30 years old - 2400 kcal;
  • 31-50 years old - 2200 kcal;
  • over 50 years old - 1800 kcal.

Those who lead a more active lifestyle, periodically exercise, need to increase their calorie content by 200-300 kcal. If a man plays sports, works hard physically, then the need for calories increases to 3000 at a young age, but decreases to 2400 after 50 years.

Basic rules for a healthy diet for men

It is believed that the basis of the male diet is meat. This is partly correct, meat products contain a large amount of protein and essential amino acids, which are not found in plant foods. But an excess of protein food harms men's health, you must adhere to the rule - 1 g of protein per kilogram of body weight. But these should be high-quality natural products, not semi-finished products.

Many people ignore vegetables and fruits, leaving potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes as an exception. But plant foods are good for health. It is a source of many vitamins, minerals, as well as ballast substances - fiber, which ensures normal digestion and protects against the development of constipation. For those who tend to have bowel problems and have low fiber diets, you can supplement your diet with fiber capsules.

The amount of fat should be small, you need to remember that cholesterol is needed for men's health. To maintain the prostate, preserve sexual function, protect blood vessels and the heart, the nervous system, it is necessary that omega-3 and omega-6 acids be present in the diet. Most of them are found in vegetable oils, fatty fish, nuts, wheat germ. But you can take ready:

fish oil concentrate;

complex of omega-3, 6, 9 acids;

capsules Orihiro Omega-3.

Every day, the menu should contain foods rich in vitamins and trace elements involved in sperm production and testosterone production. These substances include zinc, selenium, vitamin C, E and group B. The need for them increases several times if a man has bad habits - smoking or he abuses alcohol. Then it will not be possible to fill the deficit only with the help of nutrition, it is necessary to take special vitamin complexes:

  • Evalar Effex;
  • Superum;
  • Unitex;
  • Alphabet.

Products that are harmful to men's health

To maintain health, it is necessary to exclude from the diet products that are harmful to the body. Meat is a favorite male food, but it must be natural. The composition of sausages, sausages, fast food has a lot of hidden fat, trans fats. They disrupt metabolism, damage blood vessels and lead to obesity.

Smoked meats, foods rich in dyes, preservatives, artificial flavors do not belong to healthy foods. Therefore, any prepared food should be excluded from the diet. It is better to spend time and cook a full meal.

Harmful foods also include sweets and starchy foods. This is a source of simple carbohydrates that are quickly absorbed into the blood and deposited as subcutaneous fat. Such dietary errors lead to the development of obesity, metabolic syndrome, which includes hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus and atherosclerosis of the vessels.

Alcoholic beverages, which are often abused by men, are also harmful to health. They disrupt the liver, lead to the accumulation of harmful metabolic products in the blood. Beer contains phytoestrogens - plant analogues of female hormones that cause potency disorders and female-type obesity. Sometimes losing weight does not help restore sexual function. But Leveton vegetable tablets help in this.

Healthy Foods

In order to create a proper nutrition program, it is necessary to take healthy foods as a basis. By alternating different types of protein foods, including the amount of fat and carbohydrates you need, you can maintain your health and improve well-being.

The following foods are considered healthy for men:

  • lean meats - veal, chicken, turkey, rabbit meat;
  • fatty fish - herring, trout, mackerel, salmon;
  • fermented milk products - cottage cheese, kefir, natural yogurt, fermented baked milk, sour cream, low-fat cream;
  • seafood - shrimp, crab, octopus and crayfish;
  • vegetable food - any vegetables and fruits;
  • nuts, mushrooms.

Milk can also be included in your diet, it is a healthy food. But some adults have an intolerance to milk protein, which is manifested by diarrhea. Therefore, whole milk should be treated with caution.

How to make a weekly diet for a man

A properly designed nutrition plan will allow you to maintain an optimal balance of nutrients, vitamins and not feel hungry. Therefore, during the day you need at least 4-5 meals approximately every 3 hours.

Breakfast should be hearty and contain enough protein and carbohydrates. Moreover, the protein should be easily digested. Therefore, in the morning you can cook an omelet, scrambled eggs, porridge with milk, cottage cheese casserole. Sandwiches with sausage, butter cannot be called proper nutrition.

The next meal can be in the form of a snack 2 hours after breakfast. Enough at this time to drink kefir, yogurt, eat fruit. At lunch, you need to get the main amount of calories and nutrients. Therefore, they use recipes for hearty meat dishes, offal. You can plan meals for the week. It might look like this:

  • Monday - chicken breast with stewed vegetables;
  • Tuesday - baked veal with mashed potatoes;
  • Wednesday - fish steak with rice;
  • Thursday - risotto with chicken and vegetables;
  • Friday - pasta with chop from any meat;
  • Saturday - chicken liver with buckwheat;
  • Sunday - baked mackerel with vegetable stew.

You don't have to eat soup every day to eat right. This dish is healthy, but too strong meat broth can have a bad effect on digestion. But be sure to add any vegetable salad at lunch. If you can’t cook dinner at home, you have to go to a cafe, it is better to give preference to those establishments where homemade food is prepared.

For an afternoon snack, you can prepare a salad of fresh or boiled vegetables, cottage cheese dishes, fruits or dairy products. Dinner should be no later than 3 hours before bedtime so that what you eat is not deposited in the form of fat, and the stomach has time to digest food. For dinner, it is recommended to choose simple dishes, do not eat heavy fatty and fried foods, protein foods. It is better to give preference to carbohydrates - cereals, vegetables, as well as fermented milk products.

You need to eat regularly, hunger is just as bad for the body as overeating. Do not forget about the drinking regime. On average, a man needs 1. 5 liters of fluid per day, but with increased loads, when working under the scorching sun, the amount of water increases significantly.

Diet food

In some cases, dietary rules change. If a man needs to lose weight, you need an effective diet. It aims to control calories consumed, reduce the amount of fat, sugars and foods that increase appetite. At the same time, it is necessary to increase physical activity. For men who want to lose weight, it is important to introduce L-lysine into the diet, which controls carbohydrate metabolism. L-arginine will help to improve the functioning of the cardiovascular system with excess weight, maintain sexual function.

The diet is not accompanied by a decrease in the number of meals, otherwise the feeling of hunger will appear. You just need to reduce the energy value by including more vegetables and fruits in the menu.

When following a diet for weight loss, it is better to plan a diet for a week and stick to it carefully.


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