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10 Whole Foods Foods to Buy for Baby-Led Weaning — Fortified Family

Mar 22

Mar 22 10 Whole Foods Foods to Buy for Baby-Led Weaning

Katie Ferraro

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I have not received any financial compensation from the brands or companies featured in the post for their inclusion. I am an affiliate for some of these brands and there are affiliate links included in this post.

Whole paycheck jokes aside, Whole Foods is a great place to get some baby-led weaning basics. Of course there are tons of different types of BLW-friendly foods available at all stores...but I want to share some unique finds at Whole Foods that work great for baby-led weaning.

This post is part of a series featuring different types of stores that feature foods you may not have thought to feed your baby. For the other blog posts about BLW foods you can purchase from different stores, be sure to see:

10 Trader Joe’s Foods to Buy for Baby-Led Weaning
10 Costco Foods to Buy for Baby-Led Weaning
10 Sprouts Farmers Market Foods to Buy for Baby-Led Weaning
10 Wal-Mart Foods to Buy for Baby-Led Weaning

Now this is certainly not an exhaustive list, but here are 10 Whole Foods Foods to buy for baby-led weaning.

1. Applesauce

When you’re feeding your baby, you don’t need to fear fruit! Some people mistakenly think offering baby fruit before vegetables will cause baby to have an affinity for fruit. Sounds plausible, but it’s just not true. And there is no data or research to support this notion about fruit before vegetables are bad.

In fact, I recorded a whole BABY-LED WEANING MADE EASY podcast episode called “Will Offering Fruit Before Vegetables Make Your Baby Crave Sweet Foods” and you can listen to that.

Apples are a huge choking risk for babies and toddlers and babies should never be offered raw, crunchy or crispy apples. You can make peeled, soft, cooked apple slices that babies can scoop up and self-feed.

But unsweetened applesauce works for apple introduction too. You can offer applesauce on a preloaded spoon, adding the applesauce to the spoon, handing the spoon to your baby & then gently guiding hand to mouth if needed before the baby gets the hang of things.

When buying applesauce make sure it’s unsweetened. The jar you’re buying may not say “unsweetened” but the absence of sugar in the ingredient list is what you’re looking for which means it is unsweetened. Your ingredients in the ingredient list should be just apples (...but sometimes you’ll see vitamin C or ascorbic acid which is fine too, that’s just to prevent browning.)

If you decide you want to skip purees altogether, you might consider going for soft-cooked apple slices for baby-led weaning. One of my favorite BLW recipes is for Cinnamon Cooked Apples and it’s included inside of my QUICK-START GUIDE TO BABY-LED WEANING.

The QUICK-START GUIDE TO BABY-LED WEANING is a 16-page e-book jam-packed with everything you need to get a safe start to solid foods. You can get your guide (with a few of my favorite BLW recipes in it too).

DOWNLOAD THE QUICK-START GUIDE TO BABY-LED WEANING

2. Pumpkin Puree

Don’t look past pumpkin when you’re doing baby-led weaning! Fresh pumpkin may be a seasonal food in some parts of the world, but canned pumpkin puree is always in season when starting solid foods!

Canned pumpkin is gold as far as nutrition and a new taste goes in BLW.

Just be sure you’re not buying pumpkin pie puree; that has added sugar and we want to avoid added sugar for babies. Canned pumpkin puree is what you want and the only ingredient should be pumpkin.

Once you have some canned pumpkin in the house, you might be wondering what else you can do with it? I have a free download with 5 PUMPKIN RECIPES FOR BABY-LED WEANING (...and I also show you how to make pumpkin squash safely for babies, if you’re up for that!). Click for the free pumpkin download.

DOWNLOAD 5 FREE PUMPKIN RECIPES FOR BABY-LED WEANING

3. Crinkle Cut Fries, No Added Salt

If you’re following my 5-STEP FEEDING FRAMEWORK for introducing solids using baby-led weaning, each week you introduce 5 new foods to your baby:

1 new fruit
1 new vegetable
1 new starch
1 new protein
1 new challenge category food

When it comes to the starchy foods (that’s the Wednesday / day 3 food), many parents encounter problems. Beyond bread or pasta, they’re not sure what kind of carb foods babies can eat.

Potatoes are a good option for baby-led weaning. Babies can safely eat potatoes. They’re packed with potassium and carbohydrate that helps fuel your baby’s growing body.

But dry potato products (like all dry foods) can be a potential choking hazard. And lots of frozen potato products have too much added salt.

I love these No Added Salt Crinkle Cut Fries that you can find in the frozen food aisle at Whole Foods. They’re perfect for baby-led weaning because they’re the perfect shape and size for your baby to pick up and self-feed.

To add moisture I like to douse these fries in avocado oil just before they’re done baking. We don’t want crunchy foods for BLW (again, a choking hazard) and added fat is beneficial for your baby’s still developing brain.

I love avocado oil for baby-led weaning. It has a high smoke point (so you can fry foods safely), a mild flavor profile that doesn’t interfere with the flavor of the new food your baby is trying and it has a healthy fatty acid profile with almost entirely unsaturated fats.

The brand of avocado oil I use is from Primal Kitchen. I buy the 750 ml bottle size of avocado oil because I end up using it so much. You can get 10% off Primal Kitchen’s avocado oil (and they have some awesome low sodium sauces that are great for BLW too) using the code FERRARO10 (this is my affiliate code).

Click to shop the Primal Kitchen avocado oil.

SHOP PRIMAL KITCHEN AVOCADO OIL - 10% OFF CODE FERRARO10

4. Naked Rotisserie Chicken

Hands down the best thing going for baby-led weaning at Whole Foods is their Naked Rotisserie Chicken.

Everyone knows animal foods like chicken are a good source of iron...and babies need to have iron early on and often throughout the weaning process.

If you’re not inclined to cooking chicken from scratch, rotisserie chickens are usually out because they have too much sodium.

But the Whole Foods Naked Rotisserie Chicken is magic: because they made it for you. ..just without any added salt.

Now sometimes you have to dig around in the rotisserie chicken heated shelf to find them, but the Nakeds are usually there, and they’re a great bet for BLW.

When offering your baby the chicken, be sure to remove any skin and bone. I don’t feed babies chicken breast because of the choking hazard with dry meats; but opt for the dark meat such as legs, wings and thighs, and you’ll be surprised how much your baby will love this new food!

5. Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese

In my 5-STEP FEEDING FRAMEWORK for baby-led weaning, on Day 5 each week we always do a new CHALLENGE category food.

The CHALLENGE foods include the Big 8 allergenic foods (plus sesame) as well as the trickier texture and harder-to-feed flavors babies don’t always get the chance to - but certainly can - eat.

Starting in week 1 of baby-led weaning I introduce 1 new allergenic food per week. I like to start with the 3 most common pediatric food allergies: dairy, egg and peanut.

For dairy, whole milk full fat yogurt is a good bet, but so is whole milk ricotta cheese. Most cheese has too much sodium for BLW, but ricotta is surprisingly low in salt. As a soft cheese it makes a great dipper or topper for dry bread products like pancakes which could otherwise be a choking hazard.

For more information on giving your baby a safe start to solid foods using my 5-STEP FEEDING FRAMEWORK for baby-led weaning, come check out my free workshop, “BABY-LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS: How to get your baby to try 100 foods before turning 1 without you having to spoon-feed purees or buy pouches!”

Everyone on this free workshop gets a copy of my 100 FIRST FOODS LIST...so you’ll never wonder what foods to feed your baby next! You can sign up for this week’s workshop times here.

6. Weetabix

Not a lot of cereals make the cut for baby-led weaning. They either have too much added sugar, too much salt or the pieces are too small for early eaters to pick up and self-feed.

But Brits know about Weetabix - their beloved British breakfast cereal, and it’s surprisingly good for baby-led weaning.

Now there is a small amount of salt in Weetabix (1 biscuit = 65 mg sodium)...but my general rule of thumb is I try to stick to less than 100 mg sodium per serving of a packaged food I’m going to feed to the baby.

Obviously, most of the foods we feed are NOT packaged foods and babies don’t eat the same size as posted adult portion sizes. So 100 mg sodium per serving is a good rule of thumb.

For Weetabix you HAVE to soften the crunchy cereal biscuit up with milk or breastmilk or formula because dry foods are a choking hazard. It’s ok to use whole milk in cooking or ingredients for baby-led weaning, we just don’t substitute fluid cow’s milk in place of breastmilk and/or formula until age 1.

7. Tri-color carrots

Fruits and vegetables are important foods for babies to eat. ..they’re just not ALL your baby can eat. And when doing fruits & vegetables, you want to feed babies the individual foods that are soft, cooked and cut into stick and spear shapes about the size of your adult pinky finger.

There are no shortage of fruit and vegetable options that work for baby-led weaning, but I particularly love when you can find multi-colored options of a piece of produce: like carrots.

Roasting carrots is a great way to bring out their flavor. And don’t be shy about seasoning these cooked carrots either. We want to avoid added salt, added sugar and any spices that might be painfully hot in your baby’s mouth. But other than that, all spices are fair game.

For seasoning roasted vegetables, I particularly like the salt-free seasoning options available from The Spice House. The Spice House has been offering up amazing, unique spice blends since 1957 and their salt-free options are so great for seasoning baby’s food without salt.

The Spice House seriously has high quality versions of every seasoning option under the sun at thespicehouse. com - but my personal favorite for BLW is the Salt-Free Spices Deluxe Gift Box Set. These salt-free seasoning mixes set contain 8 jars of amazing flavor that will blow your baby’s taste buds! Click to shop and get 10% off orders $25+ with code KATIE10.

SHOP THE SALT-FREE SPICE HOUSE GIFT SET - CODE KATIE10

8. Ezekiel bread

Bread is not among the foods I feed to babies early on in baby-led weaning. Bread is not good for babies because it contains too much salt and the gummy nature of a starchy food like this means it can easily ball up, get lodged on the roof of your baby’s mouth and pose a choking hazard.

There are LOTS of other ways to safely feed your baby starchy, carbohydrate foods. (My 100 FIRST FOODS LIST has 20 grain foods in the starchy category for starters!)

But when you DO feel comfortable doing bread for babies (...and for me that’s after baby has mastered a lot of individual foods, been self-feeding for a few months and also has had multiple introductions to the potentially allergenic food wheat without reaction) - if you do do bread, I like the brand Ezekiel bread.

Ezekiel makes a variety of low sodium breads. If they’re not in your bakry aisle you can usually find Ezekiel in the frozen foods aisle. It’s one of the few frozen breads most mainstream grocers in North America carry.

But beware of this about Ezekiel: one thing salt does for bread is it helps retain moisture. Without salt, the Ezekiel breads tend to be REALLY dry. And dry breads can pose a choking hazard; so be sure to moisten up your Ezekiel bread for babies with a dipper or a topper. I like ricotta as a low sodium option, but any low sodium sauce or thinned out topper you have would work well too!

And don’t freak out about buying your baby foods to eat from the frozen foods aisle.

There are actually quite a lot of frozen foods that work well for baby-led weaning. Here is another shopping-style episode from the BABY-LED WEANING MADE EASY podcast called “Freezer Aisle Finds for Baby-Led Weaning”.

9.

Kidney Beans

I don’t love small foods like kidney beans until the baby has developed the pincer grasp. That usually happens by 8 or 9 months, so kidney beans don’t work for early eaters at 6 or 7 months.

But when your baby is ready to try kidney beans, or any low sodium canned beans for that matter - Whole Foods tends to have a large selection of no salt added canned beans.

And if you don’t trust that canned foods are ok for baby-led weaning, please do listen to this BABY-LED WEANING MADE EASY podcast episode I recorded called “Canned Foods that CAN Work for Baby-Led Weaning”.

And want more ideas of canned foods plus other pantry staples you can use to stock your BLW kitchen?

I have a free BLW PANTRY PLANNER download with TONS of info about good foods to keep on hand when trying out all of these new foods with your baby.

You can download the BLW PANTRY PLANNER.

10. Sunflower Seed Butter

We can’t feed babies thick globs of nut or seed butters. The sticky foods like that can easily become lodged on the roof of the baby’s mouth or occlude the airway and they present a choking risk.

But you CAN thin out nut and seed butters with formula, breastmilk, yogurt or unsweetened applesauce. I like to get it to a consistency where it drips off the spoon to be safe for earlier eaters to swallow. And if you’re doing yogurt keep in mind that it contains the potentially allergenic food milk, so it is important to try yogurt on its own a few times without reaction before offering in a combination food mixture like this.

The Sunflower Seed Butter from Whole Foods is a good BLW bet because it does not contain any added sugar or sodium.

More BLW Grocery Shopping Goodness

If you can’t get enough of this info on what to buy or not to buy when you’re grocery shopping for baby-led weaning, I have a BABY-LED WEANING MADE EASY podcast I recorded just for you!

It’s called “Grocery Shopping for BLW: Stocking Up Smart & What to Skip” and you can listen to that episode here.

Everyone on this free workshop gets a copy of my 100 FIRST FOODS LIST...so you’ll never wonder what foods to feed your baby next! You can sign up for this week’s workshop times.

Thanks for stopping by and happy feeding...but happy grocery shopping too!

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Food Research | Ratings of Roskachestvo

Grocery

Sausages

Confectionery

canned food nine0003

Vegetable oil

Dairy

Meat, poultry, egg

Vegetables fruits nine0003

Fish and seafood

Sauces

Bakery products

Goods with a quality mark

1
Goods with a quality mark nine0003
Asenievskaya farm Whole drinking pasteurized milk with a mass fraction of fat 3. 4-6.0% Asenievskaya farm
2
Goods with a quality mark

Cheburashkin Brothers Drinking pasteurized whole milk, mass fraction of fat from 3.6% to 4.6%, Cheburashkin Brothers
3
Goods with a quality mark

Mu-u Whole pasteurized drinking milk, mass fraction of fat from 3.4% to 6.0%, "Mu-u"
four
Goods with a quality mark

Snezhok Smetana 20% "Snowball"
five
Goods with a quality mark

Milk of the Orenburg Region Pasteurized drinking milk, mass fraction of fat 3.2%, Milk of the Orenburg Region
6
Goods with a quality mark

Korovka from Korenovka Sour cream, fat mass fraction 20%, Korovka from Korenovka
7
Goods with a quality mark

Agrocomplex Vyselkovsky Sour cream with a mass fraction of fat 20% "Agrocomplex Vyselkovsky"
8
Goods with a quality mark nine0003
Lebedyan milk Sour cream, fat mass fraction 20%, Lebedyan milk
nine
Goods with a quality mark

Favorite milk Pasteurized drinking milk, fat mass fraction 2. 5%, Favorite milk
10
Goods with a quality mark

Milk of the Bryansk Dairy Plant UHT drinking milk, fat content 3.2%, Milk of the Bryansk Dairy Plant

SHOW MORE products

List of offenders

1
Infringing product

Lenta Condensed whole milk with sugar, Lenta
2
Infringing product

Glavprodukt Condensed whole milk with sugar, Glavprodukt
3 nine0002 Infringing product

Tyazhin Dairy product, sweetened condensed milk, 8.5% fat, Tyazhin
four
Infringing product

Cheese maker Dutch Cheese, Cheese maker
five
Infringing product

Cheese Valley Dutch Cheese, 45%, bar, Cheese Valley
6
Infringing product

Nadezhda Semi-hard cheese "Dutch", 45%, BZMZH, "Nadezhda"
7
Infringing product

Tyukalinsky Butter and Cheese Plant Dutch Cheese, 45%, weight, without zmzh, Tyukalinsky Butter and Cheese Plant
8
Infringing product nine0003
Altaiskie syrovary Cheese "Gollandsky", packed, mass fraction of fat in dry matter 45%, "Altaiskie syrovary"
nine
Infringing product

Hermes Cheese "Dutch", semi-hard, packed, m. d.zh. in dry matter 45%
10
Infringing product

Mamadysh Dutch Cheese, Mamadysh, mass fraction of fat in dry matter 45%

SHOW MORE products

What are whole foods and why are they important for health?

There has been a lot of talk lately about the benefits of whole foods. But what it really means, few know. Let's look at what whole foods are and how to eat them.

Whole foods include juicy fruits, nutritious vegetables, nutritious legumes, unrefined whole grains, seeds and nuts, herbs and spices such as turmeric, cinnamon or ginger. “Integrity” of foods does not mean that they cannot be cooked, ground, or combined with other foods. Rather, it means that the products you buy must be organic, free of preservatives, artificial colors and food additives. But how to cook them, only you will decide. nine0003 Source: www.pixabay.com

A whole food diet is sometimes referred to as "clean eating." This direction arose in 1946 and was associated with the detection of harmful substances in industrially grown products and manufactured semi-finished products.

How do whole foods affect health?

- When you eat a variety of foods, you provide your body with the nutrients it needs to function properly. In addition to vitamins, minerals, protein, enzymes, and fiber, whole foods contain phytochemicals, including antioxidants, flavonoids, polyphenols, anthocyanins, terpenes, tannins, ligans, fatty acids, and more.

- Many whole foods contain compounds called probiotics that feed the beneficial bacteria in the gut. Prebiotics stimulate the growth and activity of beneficial bacteria in the colon. This leads to healthier gut, skin, and mental health. Fermented foods such as sauerkraut, pickles, and kimchi contain prebiotics and are also considered whole foods.

Source: www.pixabay.com/

- As Hippocrates said, "Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food." When it comes to health, food really is the best medicine. For normal functioning, all cells of the body require nutrition, including the immune system. A healthy diet fuels the immune response and keeps the whole body healthy. Experts believe that malnutrition weakens the immune system, as the body lives in a state of deficiency. But this does not mean that you need to eat a lot and often. The main thing is to make the diet varied and then you will achieve the desired results. nine0003

- Whole foods help protect the heart, and if that's what you want, stick to the plate rule. This means that half of the dinner plate should be vegetables and herbs, a quarter - meat or fish, the remaining quarter - whole grains, pasta or potatoes. Normalizing your diet will help maintain heart health, lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels. Not to mention the fact that proper nutrition will help to get rid of excess weight, especially if you combine it with physical activity. nine0192

Source: www.pixabay.com

Best whole food

- Leafy greens like spinach, kale, chard and lettuce
- Cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage.
- Pepper: bell pepper, cayenne, jalapeno, etc.
- Pumpkin, patissons and marrows
- Root vegetables: parsnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, etc.
- Berries such as blueberries, currants, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries
- Citrus fruits
- Apples
- Avocado
- Tomatoes
- Brown or wild rice
- Oats
- Buckwheat
- Whole grain flour
- Seeds and nuts such as walnuts, almonds, pecans, Brazil nuts, cashews, pistachios, flax seeds, chia seeds, etc.