When is the best time to give baby solid foods

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)

en español: ¿Cuándo puede empezar a comer alimentos sólidos mi bebé?

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD

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

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Complementary foods. When and where to start?

Turganova Elena

Published: 01/16/2023

Reading time: 5 minutes

6413

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:

introductions of finely ground products (6-9 months)

introductions of coarsely ground products (9-12 months)

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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How to transition a child from mashed potatoes to regular food

The introduction of dense food with pieces improves satiety and teaches the baby to chew, prepares him for the transition to a common table and trains speech skills. We are discussing how to transfer a child to solid food with puree and at the same time not provoke a refusal to eat, which can lead to health problems, with a pediatrician, medical consultant of the SMART-MAMA project, Polina Aleksandrovna Kizino.

— Polina Alexandrovna, why do they start with pureed foods first?

— Classic complementary foods are introduced around 6 months or earlier. At this age, it is quite difficult for babies to coordinate the work of all the muscles of the oral cavity and chew hard pieces. Other than breast milk or formula, the baby has not tried anything yet. Therefore, if you give him hard pieces right away, he may not figure out what to do with them. In addition, for good absorption and easier swallowing, of course, pureed food is more suitable - cereals or mashed potatoes.

If, for some reason, a child begins to receive complementary foods at 7-8 months (that is, later than the recommended 4-6 months), it is acceptable to introduce products with very soft and small pieces, similar to mashed potatoes. Even if a child swallows such a piece without chewing, it will happen without discomfort and does not threaten to refuse food with pieces in the future.

— What should be the consistency of food in the first year of a baby's life?

- At the stage of introducing the first or second complementary foods, the nutritional consistency is required to be homogeneous, that is, completely homogeneous, without pieces, veins of vegetables or cereal flakes. As the baby matures, he is already able to eat vegetables mashed with a fork. Gradually, the pieces may become harder and larger. However, even if the baby eats pieces, this does not mean that homogeneous foods should be immediately excluded when learning to chew. He can get both.

— Why is solid food obligatory for children under one year old?

— It is necessary to transfer a child to solid food only because he will not eat homogeneous purees and cereals all his life. And as soon as the physiological ability to chew appears, the baby begins to chew soft food, even if he does not yet have teeth. If the baby remains on homogeneous food and does not learn to chew, then it will be difficult for him to switch to other foods, he will not want to eat in a new way.

When chewing, the oral apparatus develops: jaws, muscles, teeth. The skill of chewing is closely related not only to the maxillofacial system and food processing, but also to the formation of bite and the development of speech in a child.

— When should a child be moved to a common table with hard pieces?

- This happens differently for all children, but on average about 7-8 months. At the same time, solid pieces do not mean those products that need to be gnawed, but precisely what is different from homogeneous food.

All changes in the child's diet are introduced gradually. Imagine if he suddenly bites off a large piece that he cannot chew and starts swallowing - as a result, there is a risk of severe choking and choking. Or, at best, experience discomfort, so you don’t want to try this product again. In order not to provoke such situations, all transitions in a child's life must be carried out very smoothly.

— How do parents know when a child is ready for solid food?

— Apart from the age and positive reaction of the child to the proposed product, there are no other signs. Even teeth will not be a readiness factor for solid foods. But if parents delay the introduction of solid pieces and a child at 9-10 months old is not yet familiar with them, then he will not want to eat this and will demand mashed potatoes.

Constant choking on food, regurgitation, restlessness of the baby are adverse reactions to the introduction of solid food. It makes sense to consult a pediatrician.

Remaining undigested food in the stool may be normal and should not be a concern for parents. In order for food to begin to be fully absorbed, the body needs time to adapt to complementary foods. It is important to monitor the condition of the baby.

— How to transfer a child to a common table if he refuses solid food?

- Unfamiliar and "unpleasant" foods should be offered at the start of a feed while the baby is still hungry. If the baby starts breakfast or lunch with his favorite dish, then, having been a little full and realizing that he got what he wanted, he, of course, will refuse other food.

It is necessary to interest the child in literally all suitable ways:

demonstrate interest in the product by example, praise its taste;
offer "baby" food from your own plate;
put food on a pretty children's plate;
beautifully decorate food on a plate, make “pictures”;
praise for the eaten pieces.

All this does not distract from the process of eating, like cartoons, and does not disguise eating as a game. The food will be interesting for the child, and he will get pleasure and satisfaction from what he eats.

Praise from parents is especially important for babies over one year old. For the sake of keeping the parents happy, the child is sometimes ready to do something that he does not like.

— What food to offer first and what does the child's menu depend on?

- This can be any food, and not necessarily new dishes. But you need to gradually change the density and hardness of food, the size of the pieces. To help in getting to know the pieces, but not with chewing, a nibbler can. Let not all children love it, but this accessory is important for the safety of the child: with it, the baby will not swallow too large a piece and will not choke.

How to start introducing solid food

Products	Familiar products, but no longer homogeneous, but of a different consistency - you just need to mash the vegetables with a fork, grind them larger, chop a piece on a fork or invite the baby to take the vegetable with his hand and bite off him on his own.
Quantity	Look at the child's reaction, his desire and ability.
Consistency	The softness of the product should be the same as, for example, a ripe banana, so that when swallowing, even without chewing, the baby does not experience pain, gag reflex and other unpleasant sensations. Subsequently, the food becomes more and more solid.
Administration order	One new product is administered over three to four days to monitor the response. Moreover, it should be exactly the same for the same product in both hard and soft form.
Piece size	Start with pieces about the size of a pea. You need to pay attention to how the child will chew the boiled "peas" of food. With their softness, there is practically no risk of choking and it is unlikely that a piece will get stuck.

— How often should there be hard pieces in the diet? A child can eat only homogeneous purees all day, and then all day - only pieces. In addition, food chopped in different ways can be mixed in one dish, but so that the baby understands that in the spoon he has not only mashed potatoes, but also pieces. Then he will count on what he will have to chew. Food should be washed down - WHO recommends the mandatory introduction of water at the start of complementary foods.

- Rusks, bagels or whole fruits - when can they be introduced?

- Hard crackers and fruits can be in the diet for up to a year, but at a time when the baby still has no or few teeth and he will definitely not bite off, but lick or procrastinate treats. The child rubs boiled potatoes, carrots, broccoli well with gums, but cannot chop solid foods from the adult menu. It is right to give them in pedagogical complementary foods in order to introduce the baby to different tastes.

Be aware that when the incisors appear, the child may bite off a large enough piece that he cannot chew. Therefore, it is better for parents not to take risks if they cannot control the size of the pieces. A large unchewed lump of food causes pain and vomiting when it cannot penetrate the esophagus due to its size.

— How to teach a child to chew hard pieces?

- Other than constantly offering to try pieces, there are no special exercises that would help a child learn to chew before the age of one.