When baby start to eat solid food
When, What, and How to Introduce Solid Foods | Nutrition
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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
Complementary foods. When and where to start?
Turganova Elena
Published: 01/16/2023
Reading time: 5 minutes
3006
The purpose of complementary foods is to supplement the child's diet with nutrients and switch from breast milk (infant formula) to common table foods. In order for this transition to be harmonious and help the child develop comprehensively, the introduction of complementary foods begins with homogenized forms (mashed potatoes) with a gradual transition to a thicker and firmer consistency, from finely chopped to larger, pieces.
It is important not only to feed the child, but also to instill new skills: biting, chewing and owning cutlery. The texture and consistency of complementary foods should be appropriate for the child's developmental level.
When pieces are introduced into complementary foods
Pieces of complementary foods (12-23 months) can be started after passing through the following stages:
In addition to age, one should also focus on the child's psychophysical readiness: his interest, the presence of teeth, the ability to sit and hold objects in his hand.
After 1.5 years, purees are actively replaced with thick and coarsely ground food, the degree of mechanical and culinary processing is reduced to develop chewing skills, strengthen the muscles of the oral cavity and develop the ability to control the organs of articulation (lips, tongue, jaw).
Complementary foods. Where to begin?
Start introducing pieces with foods that the child is already familiar with.
- Porridges are well boiled, but not prepared from cereal flour, not rubbed or ground in a blender
- Prepare vegetable and cereal casseroles
- Vegetables and fruits are chopped or sliced rather than finely grated
- Meat and fish are prepared as cutlets or stews from finely chopped pieces
Industrial complementary foods can also help with pieces labeled for children from 1 year to 3 years.
Modern packaging such as pouch helps develop motor skills and independent skills.
What size pieces should be for the first feeding?
Purees and porridges made from grain flour are the best form for the first feeding.
Further, the consistency changes towards thicker and denser, cooked foods (dishes) are finely chopped or crushed. For cereals from 8 months, you can use muesli with pieces of berries and fruits to enhance the sensory experience.
The size of food pieces increases gradually, from grains to "peas" and "hazelnuts".
How do you know when your baby is ready for solid foods?
This discovery may be unexpected when a child accidentally takes food from the table, bites off a piece and chews it calmly.
In other cases, give the child the opportunity to take the initiative at the table, allowing him to take food from the table, taste it and “tooth”, bite and chew it.
From 8 months, start offering more solid, finely ground food. Let your child bite off food (vegetables, fruits, meatballs, etc.). Active spitting or vomiting are signs of unpreparedness. Normal perception, chewing and calm swallowing mean that the baby is completely ready to eat in pieces.
It is important to remember that prolonged feeding of mashed foods is an abuse of ease of use that limits the development of the child, inhibits the development of motor skills and adversely affects the child's eating behavior.
8-10 months is a critical period for changing the consistency of food towards dense, to pieces.
Author of article
Turganova Elena
Pediatrician
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Contents of the article
- When pieces are added to complementary foods
- Complementary foods. Where to begin?
- What size pieces should be for the first feeding?
- How do you know when a baby is ready for solid foods?
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- Complementary milk porridge
- How to introduce complementary foods?
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From mashed potatoes to chunks: when to switch your baby to solid food liquid food - mother's milk.
Congenital reflexes are responsible for this process: sucking and swallowing. By the time they are applied to the breast, they are already quite well developed. -
Until 4-6 months the baby can only eat liquid, homogeneous food. If a denser lump of food gets into the mouth, the gag reflex will work.
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From 4 to 6 months the baby starts chewing. Parents may notice that the baby no longer sucks the toy that has fallen into the mouth, but tries to chew. Gradually, the work of the masticatory muscles is consistent with the swallowing reflex, the baby shows interest in the food that he sees on the table with his parents. At this age, the protective reflex of pushing food thicker than breast milk with the tongue also fades away. This is a signal that the time has come to introduce the child to liquid homogenized (homogeneous) mashed potatoes and cereals, which resemble thick sour cream in consistency.
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From 6 to 9 months, when many children already have their first teeth, it is necessary to switch to a thicker food - puree (crushed particle size 1.
5 mm). But the dishes should still be without lumps. If they are caught, the baby will push them out of the mouth. -
After 9 months the baby tries to chew everything that gets into his mouth. This suggests that it is time to complicate the structure of food and switch to coarsely ground purees (particle size 3 mm). Apples can already be grated on a coarse grater or just finely chopped. To encourage chewing, also offer the crumbs a piece of bread or baby biscuits.
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After 12 months, when there are already 8 teeth in the mouth, boiled vegetables can be kneaded with a fork. As the chewing reflex continues to develop, it's time to teach your child to bite off food in small pieces. For this, the crumbs are given children's meatballs, fruit slices, a piece of bread, simple bagels.
The timing of the crumbs' acquaintance with thicker food is, of course, indicative. But if you are too late or hurry with its introduction, problems may arise.
Haste can cause regurgitation, vomiting, and fear of eating food. If you decide to postpone a meeting with a thicker or solid food for a long time, then there may be a lag in the development of the digestive system and the chewing apparatus. It will be more difficult for a child to learn to bite and chew food. For this reason, it is necessary to carefully study the labels on baby food packages. Regardless of the recommendations of the manufacturer, remember that acquaintance with complementary foods cannot occur before 4-5 months.
- Photo
- Sam Edwards/Getty Images/OJO Images RF
When to start?
This should be determined by the doctor observing the health of the baby, because each child has his own individual developmental characteristics and may not fit into the general scheme.
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