Solid food and baby

When, What, and How to Introduce Solid Foods | Nutrition

For more information about how to know if your baby is ready to starting eating foods, what first foods to offer, and what to expect, watch these videos from 1,000 Days.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children be introduced to foods other than breast milk or infant formula when they are about 6 months old. Introducing foods before 4 months old is not recommended. Every child is different. How do you know if your child is ready for foods other than breast milk or infant formula? You can look for these signs that your child is developmentally ready.

Your child:

Sits up alone or with support.
Is able to control head and neck.
Opens the mouth when food is offered.
Swallows food rather than pushes it back out onto the chin.
Brings objects to the mouth.
Tries to grasp small objects, such as toys or food.
Transfers food from the front to the back of the tongue to swallow.

What Foods Should I Introduce to My Child First?

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that for most children, you do not need to give foods in a certain order. Your child can begin eating solid foods at about 6 months old. By the time he or she is 7 or 8 months old, your child can eat a variety of foods from different food groups. These foods include infant cereals, meat or other proteins, fruits, vegetables, grains, yogurts and cheeses, and more.

If your child is eating infant cereals, it is important to offer a variety of fortifiedalert icon infant cereals such as oat, barley, and multi-grain instead of only rice cereal. Only providing infant rice cereal is not recommended by the Food and Drug Administration because there is a risk for children to be exposed to arsenic. Visit the U.S. Food & Drug Administrationexternal icon to learn more.

How Should I Introduce My Child to Foods?

Your child needs certain vitamins and minerals to grow healthy and strong.

Now that your child is starting to eat food, be sure to choose foods that give your child all the vitamins and minerals they need.

Click here to learn more about some of these vitamins & minerals.

Let your child try one single-ingredient food at a time at first. This helps you see if your child has any problems with that food, such as food allergies. Wait 3 to 5 days between each new food. Before you know it, your child will be on his or her way to eating and enjoying lots of new foods.

Introduce potentially allergenic foods when other foods are introduced.

Potentially allergenic foods include cow’s milk products, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, and sesame. Drinking cow’s milk or fortified soy beverages is not recommended until your child is older than 12 months, but other cow’s milk products, such as yogurt, can be introduced before 12 months. If your child has severe eczema and/or egg allergy, talk with your child’s doctor or nurse about when and how to safely introduce foods with peanuts.

How Should I Prepare Food for My Child to Eat?

At first, it’s easier for your child to eat foods that are mashed, pureed, or strained and very smooth in texture. It can take time for your child to adjust to new food textures. Your child might cough, gag, or spit up. As your baby’s oral skills develop, thicker and lumpier foods can be introduced.

Some foods are potential choking hazards, so it is important to feed your child foods that are the right texture for his or her development. To help prevent choking, prepare foods that can be easily dissolved with saliva and do not require chewing. Feed small portions and encourage your baby to eat slowly. Always watch your child while he or she is eating.

Here are some tips for preparing foods:

Mix cereals and mashed cooked grains with breast milk, formula, or water to make it smooth and easy for your baby to swallow.
Mash or puree vegetables, fruits and other foods until they are smooth.
Hard fruits and vegetables, like apples and carrots, usually need to be cooked so they can be easily mashed or pureed.
Cook food until it is soft enough to easily mash with a fork.
Remove all fat, skin, and bones from poultry, meat, and fish, before cooking.
Remove seeds and hard pits from fruit, and then cut the fruit into small pieces.
Cut soft food into small pieces or thin slices.
Cut cylindrical foods like hot dogs, sausage and string cheese into short thin strips instead of round pieces that could get stuck in the airway.
Cut small spherical foods like grapes, cherries, berries and tomatoes into small pieces.
Cook and finely grind or mash whole-grain kernels of wheat, barley, rice, and other grains.

Learn more about potential choking hazards and how to prevent your child from choking.

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When Can My Baby Start Eating Solid Foods? (for Parents)

A friend just started giving her 3-month-old applesauce and rice cereal. My son is just 2 weeks younger than hers, and I am wondering if I should be introducing solids soon too. When should I start?
– Taylor

Doctors recommend waiting until a baby is about 6 months old to start solid foods. Starting before 4 months is not recommended.

At about 6 months, babies need the added nutrition — such as iron and zinc — that solid foods provide. It’s also the right time to introduce your infant to new tastes and textures.

Some babies may be ready for solids sooner than 6 months, but don't start until your baby is at least 4 months old.

How do you know it’s the right time to start solid foods? Here are some signs that babies are ready:

They have good head and neck control and sit up in a high chair.
They're interested in foods. For example, they may watch others eat, reach for food, and open their mouths when food approaches.
They don’t push food out of their mouths, which is a natural tongue reflex that disappears when they’re between 4–6 months old.
They weigh twice their birth weight, or close to it.

Talk to your doctor about the right time to start solid foods.

How Should I Start Solids?

When the time is right, you can start with a single-grain, iron-fortified baby cereal. Start with 1 or 2 tablespoons of cereal mixed with breast milk, formula, or water. Feed your baby with a small baby spoon. Don’t add cereal or other food to a baby's bottle because it can lead to too much weight gain. Let your baby practice eating from a spoon and learn to stop when full.

When your baby gets the hang of eating the first food, introduce others, such as puréed meat, fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, or yogurt. Try one food at a time and wait a few days before trying something else new to make sure your baby doesn't have an allergic reaction.

Foods that are more likely to cause allergies can be among the foods you introduce to your baby. These include peanuts, eggs, cow’s milk, seafood, nuts, wheat, and soy. Waiting to start these foods does not prevent food allergies. Talk to your doctor if you are concerned about food allergies, especially if any close family members have allergies, food allergies, or allergy-related conditions, like eczema or asthma.

Infants with severe eczema or egg allergies are more likely to have allergies to peanuts. Talk to your doctor about how and when to introduce these foods to your child.

When starting your baby on solids, avoid:

foods with added sugars and no-calorie sweeteners
high-sodium foods
honey, until after the first birthday. It can cause botulism in babies.
unpasteurized juice, milk, yogurt, or cheese
regular cow's milk or soy drinks before 12 months instead of breast milk or formula. It’s OK to offer pasteurized yogurt and cheese.
foods that may cause choking, such as hot dogs, raw carrots, grapes, popcorn, and nuts

Also, do not give fruit juices to infants younger than 12 months old.

Over the next few months, introduce a variety of foods from all the food groups. If your baby doesn't seem to like something, don’t give up. It can take 8 to 10 tries or more before babies learn to like new foods.

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD

Date reviewed: February 2021

How to teach a child to chew solid food?

Shalunova Anastasia Ivanovna

Member of the Russian Union of Nutritionists, Nutritionists and Food Industry Specialists

Bring the spoon to your mouth, play with your food, twist the food with your tongue, spit it out, take a bite, try to chew it, and finally swallow a piece... What children do to cope with adult food, which at first seems so "difficult"! We tell you how to teach your child to chew solid food so that it does not become a family problem. Consulted by nutritionist Anastasia Ivanovna Shalunova.

- Anastasia Ivanovna, let's talk about how to teach a child to chew and swallow solid food. Why is age important here?

— It is important not to miss the right moment when chewing is the easiest to develop. The most optimal period is from 6 to 10 months, with the introduction of complementary foods with pieces. However, the boundaries of the norm are conditional, because a child can only eat liquid food at a year and a half.

Children begin to chew due to the development of the physiological and neuropsychological processes of the body - this is individual for each child. And here the influence of caesarean section and natural childbirth is also very important, how the birth process proceeded and how the baby developed from birth.

When to give your baby solid food

— How do parents know when their baby is ready to chew solid food?

— Food interest is conditionally formed from 4 to 6 months, when a child pulls a plate, a spoon towards himself, asks for food. During this period, complementary foods begin, gradually moving from homogeneous puree-like dishes to more dense, with pieces.

The child is ready to chew food if:

he confidently picks up and holds a spoon;
sits without adult support;
receives complementary foods for three to four weeks.

From 6 to 10 months, it is easier to teach a baby to eat and chew food in bite-size pieces. If the child does not gnaw, but sucks or licks what was given to him, there is no need to forbid him - perhaps he is not hungry or he is interested in something else at the moment.

In the absence of interest in food for up to a year, work with psychologists, neuropsychologists, and neurologists may be necessary. Each of them will look at the children's problem from their side and give recommendations.

— How many teeth are enough to start chewing?

— You can “chew” food even without teeth, rubbing the pieces with your gums. Some children have teeth late, but they are still given solid food in order to develop chewing skills. At the same time, chewing can stimulate blood circulation and tooth growth.

Read also

What "adult" food can be given to a baby under one year old and when to start the transition to a common table.

— What problems can arise if a child does not chew food?

- Some parents complain that the child chokes on solid food or that he does not chew but swallows immediately. This may be due to the late introduction of solid foods.

In addition, if a child does not chew food well, this provokes problems with digestion. You should not load the immature digestive system of the baby, as the child's body does not yet produce enough enzymes. In this case, the child will refuse food, will eat or chew less often.

What principles of nutrition should be followed:

give the child a variety of foods, but in reasonable quantities, and watch the body's reaction;
slow eating improves digestion and increases the feeling of satiety, so it is important to remember to chew your food thoroughly;
with a healthy diet, it is better to avoid feeding in front of the TV and phone, or use them very pointwise. Gadgets distract from food, lead to unconscious and rapid consumption of food, and this can result in metabolic syndrome and subsequently lead to overweight or type II diabetes.

— How do you feel about tongue massage to improve food processing?

- Tongue massage is very often used by speech therapists to relieve muscle spasms in dysarthria in children when pronunciation suffers. During massage, fingers, toothbrushes, probes are used, which can be traumatic for a child.

Parents of such children should be aware of the contraindications to speech therapy massage:

skin rashes, swelling, wounds;
herpetic infections of the oral cavity;
colds;
severe forms of chronic diseases;
oncological, neuropsychiatric diagnoses.

- How to teach a child to chew food - where to start? What size should the pieces be?

— To make chewing effective and fun, a child must have an interest in food. Favorite product will be chewed best. It is also necessary to take into account the novelty of sensations and introduce new foods when the baby is hungry.

Nuances that parents should pay attention to:

Be sure to develop food interest and build a diet, that is, the child should be hungry for the next meal.
It is best to start with chunks in foods that the child has already eaten pureed. The taste will be familiar to him, but the texture will be slightly different.
Cooking of vegetables is encouraged.
It is important to look at whether the baby is coping with his portion. The first pieces are given no larger than a match head, then the size of a little finger nail, then everything is larger. You can give the baby in the hand slices of fresh fruits, baby cookies, crackers.
Nibbler recommended for a smooth transition from puree to chunks. With him, the child eats on his own, and helps teeth erupt.
The behavior of the parents influences the behavior of the child at the table. If meeting at dinner or lunch is a family tradition, then the child automatically joins it and gets used to it, focusing on the example of the parents.

Do not give up trying to give solid food, even if the child spits out the food. But you don’t need to push the product either: you can offer it at a different moment, vary the pieces in size. Also, do not be afraid to give solid food to the child and be nervous during his training and feeding. Anxiety and panic are transmitted on a subconscious level - the baby can just hurry up and choke.

— What mistakes do parents make when feeding their baby?

— Most often, parents are in a hurry. They should pay attention to the formation of the oral apparatus and the psychological readiness of the baby to eat independently, chew and swallow the food bolus. It often happens that during the period of adaptation of the child, for example, after vaccination or moving, the mother begins to give him something unfamiliar and teach him new skills. This will only complicate the task.

If a child flatly refuses to chew solid food, do not force feed him, you need to find out the reason.

- And finally, probably one of the most popular parenting questions - cartoons while eating. What are the pros and cons?

- The child will be distracted from food by cartoons, which will negatively affect the whole process of eating. The purpose of eating is for the child to eat and realize that he is full. "If you're hungry, let's eat, if you want cartoons, watch them later" - these should be the rules. These actions must be distinguished, because watching cartoons is accompanied by other mental and motor processes.

Main recommendations:

Take your time, stimulate chewing processes and do not forget about physiology: how ready the child's body, oral apparatus, communication systems are.
Be more attentive to the baby, do not switch to your problems. The task of parents is to ensure that the child is fed, fed and develops correctly. To do this, it is important to build nutrition, taking into account the needs of the child and the processes occurring in the body.

Methods for teaching a child to chew are different, but two aspects are important in this matter: physiological and psychological. Solid foods are introduced from around six months of age, and children should be taught to chew solids before the age of one. In this case, the process depends on the received complementary foods, and on the home environment. It is important for parents to be patient during the learning process and gradually move from pureed food to regular feeding of the baby with solid food with pieces. Only then will he learn to chew and begin to enjoy the new food and his new abilities.

* Breast milk is the best food for babies. WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of a child's life and continued breastfeeding after complementary foods are introduced until the age of 2 years. Before introducing new products into the baby's diet, you should consult with a specialist. The material is for informational purposes and cannot replace the advice of a healthcare professional. For feeding children from birth.

#advice for mom #Lure #diet expansion #set tidbits #7 cereals #transfer to common table

Solid food | Tervisliku toitumise informatsioon

From the age of 6 months, in addition to breast milk, the baby needs to be supplemented to provide with the necessary amount of energy and nutrients. As you grow older, you can gradually switch to regular food (cooking it without frying, and also without adding salt and sugar). Children over 1 year of age, in addition to regular food and complementary foods, can continue to drink breast milk, but by the age of two, the child should completely switch to a common table. Exposure of a child to grain-containing foods during breastfeeding may protect him from gluten intolerance in the future. When offering a child complementary foods or regular food, care should be taken, to have a varied diet . Both during breastfeeding and during the transition to regular food, the baby may experience gases or allergies .

For children over two years of age, the same nutritional recommendations apply as adults, but the recommended serving sizes are smaller.

Children under three years of age (actually, a person of any age) do not need salty or sugary snacks, carbonated drinks, deep fried and/or very sweet and salty foods!

By the sixth month of life, the infant's eating habits and digestive system are mature enough to offer more solid foods in addition to breast milk. Proteins, carbohydrates and fats contained in regular food are different from the easily digestible sugars, fats and proteins that enter the baby's body with breast milk. Therefore, a so-called certain familiarization period is needed so that the baby's digestive system has time to get used to a new type of food. If the baby is breastfed as often as before, then these feeds cover about 2/3 of the energy needed by an 8-month-old baby. The remaining approximately 200 kilocalories should come from the various macronutrients found in complementary food ingredients, i.e. proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Complementary foods are needed so that the child can slowly move to the common table, as well as to obtain the nutrients necessary for age. Complementary foods for babies are a completely unfamiliar thing. It differs significantly from breast milk and will take time to learn how to eat it.

Proper complementary food is food that is hard enough to eat with a spoon, consists of all important types of food (except sweets), is rich in nutrients and does not contain salt and sugar. Complementary foods should always be offered to the child from a spoon and never from a bottle, as in this case the child will never understand what to eat in an upright position using a spoon. In addition, bottle feeding contains too much water, so it may not provide enough energy and nutrients. As the child grows older, you can allow him to put pieces of food in his mouth with his fingers. Simultaneously with the gradual introduction of solid food into the baby's diet, his interest in breast milk gradually begins to fade. This is completely natural and as the first birthday approaches, you can start to slowly reduce the number of breastfeeds. All children are different, so their preferences and needs are also different, but it is important that the child's diet is varied and covers all the nutritional needs of a growing body for life and development.

Complementary foods for babies by months:

0-6 months
6-8 months
9-11 months

substances can be markedly reduced.

World Health Organization recommendations for the introduction of complementary foods for children aged 6-23 months.

Age (in months)	Frequency Frequency	The portion for 1 feeding	POSSISTIC COMMUNICATION
6 9000	9000 2 or 2 times 9000 9000 1 or 2 times 9000 quantity	Finely pounded or pureed
6-8	2-3 feedings per day 9 0260 up to 1 DL	Crowned or pureed
	3-4 feeding per day 1-2 ships per day	1-1.5 DL 9000 Dl 9000 Dl 9000 1-1.5 Dl 9000 1-1.5 DL	Crowned or finely shifted
-2-23	3-4 feeding per day 1-2 snacks	9000 2-2.5 DL 263

The recommendations in the table are general and give an idea of how much a child could eat on average, however the exact amount and frequency of feedings may vary from child to child.