When can baby try food

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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Feeding Your 4- to 7-Month-Old (for Parents)

Most babies this age are ready to try solid foods. Experts recommend starting solid foods when a baby is about 6 months old, depending on the baby's readiness and nutritional needs.

Be sure to check with your doctor before giving any solid foods.

Is My Baby Ready to Eat Solid Foods?

How can you tell if your baby is ready for solids? Here are a few hints:

• Does your baby swallow food or push it out of their mouth? Babies have a natural tongue-thrust reflex that pushes food back out. Wait until this reflex disappears (typically when babies are 4–6 months old). 
• Can your baby support their own head? To eat solid food, an infant needs good head and neck control and should be able to sit up.
• Is your baby interested in food? Babies who stare, reach and grab, and open their mouths for food are ready to try solid foods.

If your doctor gives the go-ahead but your baby seems frustrated or uninterested in solid foods, try waiting a few days before trying again. Breast milk and formula will still meet nutritional needs as your baby learns to eat solid foods. But after 6 months, babies need the added nutrition — like iron and zinc — that solid foods provide.

Do not add cereal or other food to your baby's bottle because it can lead to too much weight gain.

Watch for signs that your child is hungry or full. Respond to these cues and let your child stop when full. A child who is full may suck with less enthusiasm, stop, or turn away from the breast or the bottle. With solid foods, they may turn away, refuse to open their mouth, or spit the food out.

How Should I Start Feeding My Baby Solid Foods?

When your baby is ready and the doctor says it’s OK to try solid foods, pick a time of day when your baby is not tired or cranky. You want your baby to be a little hungry, but not so hungry that they’re upset. So you might want to give your baby a little breast milk or formula first.

Have your baby sit supported in your lap or in a high chair with a safety strap.

Most babies' first food is iron-fortified infant single-grain cereal mixed with breast milk or formula. Place the spoon near your baby's lips, and let the baby smell and taste it. Don't be surprised if this first spoonful is rejected. Wait a minute and try again. Most food offered to your baby at this age will end up on the baby's chin, bib, or high-chair tray. Again, this is just an introduction.

When your little one gets the hang of eating cereal off a spoon, it may be time to try single-ingredient puréed meat, vegetables, or fruit. The order in which you give them doesn't matter, but go slow. Offer foods that are high in iron and zinc — such as meat, poultry, eggs, and beans — especially if your baby is breastfeeding. Try one food at a time and wait several days before trying something else new. This will let you identify any foods that your baby may be allergic to.

Which Foods Should I Avoid?

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’re 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. 

Possible signs of food allergy or allergic reactions include:

• rash
• bloating or an increase in gassiness
• diarrhea
• vomiting

Get medical care right away if your baby has a more severe allergic reaction, like hives, drooling, wheezing, or trouble breathing.

If your child has any type of reaction to a food, don't offer that food again until you talk with your doctor.

Babies shouldn't have:

• 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 beverages 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

Tips for Feeding Your Baby Solid Foods

With the hectic pace of family life, most parents try commercially prepared baby foods at first. They come in small, convenient containers, and manufacturers must meet strict safety and nutrition guidelines.

If you prepare your own baby foods at home, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Follow the rules for food safety, including washing your hands well and often.
• To preserve the nutrients in your baby's food, cook it in ways that keep the most vitamins and minerals. Try steaming or baking fruits and vegetables instead of boiling, which washes away the nutrients.
• Freeze portions that you aren't going to use right away.
• Whether you buy the baby food or make it yourself, texture and consistency are important. At first, babies should have finely puréed single-ingredient foods. (Just applesauce, for example, not apples and pears mixed together.)
• After your baby is eating individual foods, it's OK to offer a puréed mix of two foods. As babies get older, they will learn to eat a greater variety of tastes and textures. 
• If you use prepared baby food in jars, spoon some of the food into a bowl to feed your baby. Do not feed your baby right from the jar — bacteria from the baby's mouth can contaminate the remaining food. If you refrigerate opened jars of baby food, it's best to throw away anything not eaten within a day or two.
• Around 6 months of age is a good time for your baby to try a cup. You might need to try a few cups to find one that works for your child. Use water at first to avoid messy clean-ups. Do not give juice to infants younger than 12 months.

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.

First taste experience - agulife.ru

27.10.2018

≈ 8 min read time

Contents

• First taste experience
• Child's taste preferences
• Child nutrition rules
• Should children be forced to eat?
• What is Intuitive Eating

How should parents behave in order to instill in the baby the right eating habits, form and regulate eating behavior in general in time?

When to teach your baby proper eating behavior? General advice - the sooner the better. Scientists conducted a study in which they observed the eating habits of 1,500 children from birth to the age of 6 years. It turned out that children who ate little vegetables and fruits before 1 year old refused to eat them even at 6 years old.

According to scientists, the best age to teach children to eat healthy is 11-12 months. Moreover, children who are breastfed are more likely to try new foods.

The baby is introduced to tastes even before birth: the first such experience he gets in the mother's stomach when he swallows amniotic fluid, the taste of which depends on her nutrition. Then, while receiving mother's milk, the child also feels the tastes of mother's food. Perhaps this explains the easier addiction of such children to various foods introduced with complementary foods than in artificially fed children who receive mixtures with a stable composition and a uniform taste.

It has been experimentally proven that the child perceives new products differently depending on whether they were present in the mother's diet during pregnancy and lactation. Take care of your own rational diet at these stages: it is she who has the leading influence on the adequate formation of the taste of the baby.

Some taste preferences are already noticeable in the first months of a baby's life: he may, for example, favor sweet and salty tastes and reject bitter and sour ones. To some extent, this is a protective function of the body - to avoid food that may contain poisonous and toxic substances, because it is it that has a bitter taste (however, not all bitter food is toxic - remember grapefruit or persimmon).

How not to introduce complementary foods

Natalia Kruglova

Nutritionist, nutritionist, pediatrician

In addition to the taste itself, the formation of a child’s food preferences is also influenced by:

• Smell of food;
• Its consistency;
• Composition;
• Appearance of dishes.

When introducing complementary foods, when the baby begins to show food interest, it is important not to make mistakes and take care of all the components of the product offered to the child:

• It must arouse interest in its design;
• Appetite by smell;
• The consistency and composition correspond to the age of the baby.

Agusha products meet all the requirements for baby food and not only help the baby build the right eating behavior, but also attract him with interesting packaging.

It is worth noting that if a child categorically refuses food of a certain consistency (for example, with pieces), prefers food of the same color or food in unusual conditions (only in the dark or only on the floor), it is worth consulting with a specialist.

What if the child refuses certain foods? Naturally, still unknown foods or dishes introduced into the baby’s diet for the first time may not be to his liking. Is it too easy to give in to your little gourmet's reluctance to accept this or that new dish? No, it is necessary to patiently and repeatedly offer it to the child, sometimes disguising it with a favorite dish. Patience and their own example of parents, the lifestyle of the family as a whole can help overcome this problem.

So, what are the rules, the observance of which will allow you to instill in your child the necessary eating habits and provide the most healthy diet?

• Shape your baby's eating habits during pregnancy. Healthy eating during pregnancy is the way to healthy eating after the baby is born. How a pregnant woman eats also influences her baby's future eating habits. It's important to understand that "healthy" means "balanced" first and foremost, and cutting out all "delicious" things is not meant here: a balanced diet can include all foods, but you should limit foods high in salt, sugar, and saturated fat.
• Think over your menu during breastfeeding. Many people know that mother's breast milk provides immunity to the child and reduces the risk of food allergies. But besides this, it gives mothers an additional opportunity to form the right eating habits in the baby. To the products included in the mother's diet, the baby can "get used" already in infancy.
• Don't give up if your baby refuses to take healthy complementary foods that you introduce. The best way to teach your child to eat right is to regularly offer him healthy foods. You should not give up if he refuses them over and over again - sometimes you just need to patiently offer several times (5, 10, 15 times - on the 16th baby gives up and starts eating). Your position should not be rigid, but persistent. It is important that you have enough patience, so clearly formulate for yourself what you want to teach your baby, relentlessly follow your rules and do not give up.
• Observe the diet. Try to organize the daily routine so that the baby has 4 - 6 meals a day in small portions (let it be better for the baby to ask for supplements than the half-eaten half of the plate goes into the bin), preferably at about the same time. This will ensure the maintenance of blood sugar levels, protecting the brain from starvation.
• Eat in a specially designated and equipped place for this. Eat at a properly set table. Provide your child with an individual set of dishes; if the baby is already old enough, he can choose his own plate, cup and cutlery in the store. This aspect should not be underestimated for one simple reason: this is how the baby understands that food is important, and in the future treats this area of ​​his life more responsibly and with attention.
• Keep your diet varied. The daily diet should contain all the necessary vitamins and minerals. For health and good spirits, the body needs a sufficient amount of liquid, proteins, fats and carbohydrates, trace elements. But take care of the varied menu. If you eat the same thing, it can lead to a deficiency of essential vitamins, get bored and the baby will begin to refuse previously favorite foods.
• Calculate portion sizes correctly. We are used to hearing from parents that nothing should be left on the plate. However, much more harm can be done to health if we eat when we are already full! We should give up the habit of eating everything that is put on the plate, and not accustom our children to this. In this sense, the system of measuring portions of food “in the palm of your hand” is interesting: the portion size is the food that “fits” in your hand.
• Eat together. At least once a day, combine your own meal with feeding your child - this way you will not only instill healthy eating habits in your child, but also help him learn the rules of table manners and observe other food-related rituals.
• Surround food with positive emotions. Only positive emotions should be associated with food in a child: eating is not only the saturation of the body with useful substances, but also pleasure. Do not force the child to eat, give as much food as he willingly eats, do not rush, do not persuade or intimidate. If the baby refuses a “tasteless” but healthy product, experiment with ways to prepare and serve it, but do not scold or punish the child for refusing. Continue to offer this product in different forms, without too much pressure and with long pauses. In the end, the refusal of a particular food on the part of the baby may be a signal of a latent food intolerance, and, having insisted on your own, you may not only not achieve benefit, but also cause harm.
• Create food rituals. Warn in advance about the time of eating, teach to wash hands before and after meals, help adults with serving, sit straight at the table, eat carefully, use cutlery and napkins correctly, clean the table after eating, wash dishes - simple steps to form the right food culture . The child will appreciate your efforts more than once, finding himself in a society where the culture of behavior at the table is scrupulous.
• Eat in a relaxed environment. At the time of eating, you need to remove all toys from the child’s field of vision, turn off the TV and eliminate other irritants. So the baby will be able to focus on the food itself, listen to the signals of saturation, and enjoy the dish. Even conversations (except for reinforcing during the introduction of complementary foods) should be postponed to another, more appropriate time: when I eat, I am deaf and dumb!
• Choose food and cook together. The child will be happy to try something that he put a lot of effort into creating. Cook healthy food with him tasty and with imagination, so that the baby understands that “healthy” does not mean “tasteless”. Learn new recipes with your child, let him also show his imagination.
• Make sure that snacking between meals is healthy. Small snacks can serve as a second breakfast and afternoon snack. Fresh fruits and vegetables, cheese, cereals, nuts, dried fruits - try to have these snacks in your home and always available to your child.
• Prepare yourself healthy analogues of your favorite industrial "goodies". However, it is sometimes possible to indulge in the "goodies" of industrial production! In addition, at home it is possible to cook almost everything: chips from potatoes or other root crops, chocolate, marmalade, jelly, ice cream, caramel. Sweets can be replaced with fruits, yogurts, nuts and dried fruits, chocolate bars - dark chocolate, ice cream - homemade berry sorbet.
• Be sure to praise. It has been proven more than once that praise works much better than punishment, and positive reinforcement gives a much stronger result. Praise the child when he chooses the right foods, encourage him if he cleans up after himself from the table, tries to eat carefully and does not spill when he finishes eating, follows the rules, sits calmly at the table. There are a lot of reasons for praise, do not miss the chance and please the child with your approval.
• Do not manipulate with food. Food should not be a comfort, reward or punishment. Also review your eating habits. Even a very small child notices everything: if you constantly eat sweets, then he will definitely want to try them, and you will not be able to explain to him that this is harmful.
• Be attentive to the clues that the baby sends you. Try following the principles of intuitive eating. You may not notice that your baby "on his own", easily and without coercion, chose healthy foods as the basis of his diet: after all, he just follows the natural needs of his growing body.
• Do not look at the screen while eating. It has been scientifically proven that much more food is eaten in this way than is necessary. And if the TV is constantly on in the house, the child becomes not only dependent on the screen, but also a victim of advertising, to which young children are very susceptible, so dose the incoming information.
• Personal example. Until now, psychologists and educators have not found anything that works better than a personal example. It is very important to have family feasts, when the child will watch how dad eats, what mom does at the table. Of course, when both parents work and the child is in kindergarten, it is difficult to organize this, but it is still possible. Let it be at least joint breakfasts or dinners, or maybe just feasts on the weekends.
• The whole family must adhere to the same rules. Try to agree with all family members (even with those who live separately, but with whom your child regularly sees) about common approaches to the principles of healthy eating and food culture. Likewise, the ban on regular absences from the table during meals for raids to the TV or other "important matters of urgency" should be supported by all family members who care about the upbringing of the child.
• Family dinners. In many families, it is no longer customary to hold family dinners, when everyone gathers at a large laid table, discusses the events of the day, plans for the future, and expresses emotional support to each other. With the modern rhythm of life, a warm family dinner at the end of the working day is sometimes the only opportunity for the family to unite again, feed on energy and tune in for the next day. Keep this tradition and pass it on to your children: the family gathered at dinner is our support and support, our safe harbor.

How to convince a child to eat healthy food if he refuses? There is a huge gap between persuasion and compulsion to eat. When the mother convinces, she does not take offense at the refusal of the child and does not require him to continue eating.

“Until you eat everything, you won’t leave the table,” are familiar words? It is clear that our grandmothers simply had no choice, but we should not continue this tradition of food tyranny.

Yes, it's a shame when a lovingly prepared dinner remains almost untouched on the plate. It seems that the child neglects our care - all the forces that were spent on obtaining food and preparing it. And as if possessed by spirits from a distant Soviet childhood, we furiously repeat the words of our grandmother: “So many people are starving, and you! Mom and dad are trying, working, and you are wandering around! If you don’t eat, you will remain small and weak!”

But think better about the fact that such words are dictated not by care, but by selfish resentment for the fact that our love and care were rejected.

According to many studies, there is a link between the upbringing of a child and eating disorders in his adult life. Parents around the world behave similarly but justify food compulsion in different ways.

In the West, adults are guided by the fact that it is “tasty”, “healthy”, “expensive” and “should be eaten fresh”, and in countries such as Mauritania, a mother will be ashamed of her thin child, since all the neighbors will consider their family poor. This is especially true of girls, who in Arab villages are still fattened to the standards of the tales of "1001 nights", according to which a woman's navel should "hold an ounce of peanut butter."

If you force a child to eat, then obedient children stop eating because they are hungry, and begin to use food for other purposes. The food eaten turns out to be a way to earn mom's praise and thus experience pleasure. And in their adult lives, they will similarly turn to food to comfort themselves when they are stressed or sad.

The answer to the question: "Is it necessary to force the child to eat?" obvious: too much parental control over nutrition often leads to similar results. The same applies to prohibitions on harmful foods: the child ceases to perceive them as food and sees in them only inaccessible pleasure. It is impossible to force a child to eat unwanted wholesome foods, he again ceases to perceive him as food. For him, this is forever a lost battle in which he was defeated by a stronger opponent.

72% of people who were forced to eat specific healthy foods as children completely eliminated them from their diet in adulthood.

The concept of "intuitive eating" is opposed to the idea of ​​compulsion to eat. It is based on the ability to listen to your body, trust it and proceed from the true needs of your body, and not average recommendations. There are different ways to think about this technique, but intuitive eating in response to signals coming from the body really harmonizes our relationship with food.

And most importantly - a person remembers that you can be attentive to your feelings, emotions, needs and rely on them in your choice.

• It doesn't take much effort to follow these approaches. Especially when we are talking about little gourmets. After all, children, whose body is not yet familiar with an unbalanced menu, stress, unhealthy habits, know when, in what quantities and what kind of food they need to feel good, and often give us, adults, tips with their behavior. Unfortunately, we often turn a deaf ear to them, even when driven by the best of intentions: to feed the universally recognized healthy food ... and more!
• The best thing parents can do when they think about how average statistical norms and indicators should regulate the lives of their children is to abandon stereotypes. It is very important not to drown out the natural wisdom of the baby, insisting on their adult, "correct" ideas about healthy eating patterns.
• But if the baby prefers kefir every day, meat - no more than once a week, and always refuses milk at all, trust him: in addition to the fact that he intuitively corrects some imbalance in the body (perhaps right now he lacks bifidobacteria), he also wants to teach you something very important and well forgotten by you - the ability to trust yourself.

Eating habits that are formed in a person from childhood will be with him throughout his life, and then he will also teach his children to eat. That is why it is so important right now, while the child is small and eats mainly what we cook and offer, to lay the right habits that will help maintain his health. Discipline yourself, follow the principles of healthy eating and lifestyle, and pass them on to your children. Health to you and your families!

References

1. The team of authors. Silver spoon for children. Moscow: Eskimo Publishing House, 2015.
2. Vysotskaya Yu. A. Baby nutrition from birth and older. Moscow: Eskimo Publishing House, 2010. - 288 p.
3. Ladodo K.S., Druzhinina L.V. Baby food from 0 to 7 years old. Moscow: Eskimo Publishing House, 2013. - 272 p.
4. The team of authors. Nutrition at the beginning of life. From pregnancy to 3 years. Moscow: Eskimo Publishing House, 2017. - 288 p.

Neophobia - when a child is afraid to try new food.