Make Your Own Baby Alive Food

Written on January 5, 2008 by steven

To grow and develop well, babies need as varied a diet as possible research shows that babies who are offered a wide menu to choose from invariably choose a healthy diet and accept varied tastes. On the other hand, if they’re only given fast foods and sweet things, they’ll inevitably want fries and ketchup with everything.

What Your Baby Needs

To provide for your baby’s healthy nutrition, he needs complex carbohydrates from such things as sugar free cereal, whole wheat bread, potatoes and other vegetables, rice and pasta, protein from lean white meat, fish, and legumes such as beans, and after he’s about seven to nine months, eggs and cheese and the vitamins and minerals containcd in fresh fruit and vegetables. He needs some fat, but he should be able to get enough for his nutritional needs from the other foods you give him, especially milk. Avoid the empty calories of sweet foods like cookies and sugary cereal look at the food pyramid below to see the proportions of each type of food your baby needs for healthy growth and development.

Joining Family Meals

As soon as your baby is sitting in his high chair, he can join you at the table for meals. The sooner you can include your baby in this, the sooner your baby will learn by example what is and isn’t acceptable behavior at the table. Some suggested menus for varied, healthy meals are given in the chart below. Remember, a baby’s stomach can’t hold very much and he’ll need to eat more often than an adult. Don’t insist that he finish his meals, and give him snacks between meals if he needs them.

Foods To Give

Vary your baby’s diet so that he learns to like different tastes and textures. Include.

• Fruit and vegetables, wash them thoroughly in cold running water, and peel potatoes, carrots, apples, and peaches to get rid of any pesticide residues. Aim to give some vitamin C at each meal as fruit, vegetables, or juice-since it helps your baby’s body to absorb iron.
• Milk: from seven months, use whole cow’s milk in cooking. From one year, give as a drink.
• Meat and fish try to offer at least one serving every day of lean meat or boneless fish.
• Protein in the form of low fiber foods such as cheese or tofu, if your baby has a vegetarian diet.

Foods To Avoid

Don’t worry too much, but do take some sensible precautions:

• Don’t give foods containing wheat flour or gluten before your baby is seven months old he may find them difficult to digest.
• Don’t add sugar or salt sugar encourages bad habits and bad teeth, salt is too much for your young baby’s kidneys to cope with.
• Avoid giving your baby soft boiled eggs until he is about one year old.
• Very high fiber breakfast cereals have little place in your baby’s diet; they are too difficult to digest.
• Avoid unpasteurized cheese until your baby is at least two.

Food Hygiene

Bacterial infections picked up from badly prepared food can be dangerous for babies and children, so be careful with hygiene.

• • Always wash your hands thoroughly before handling any food and after you’ve handled raw meat.
  • Store raw meat away from other foods in the refrigerator and keep fish in the coldest part.
  • Clean the spout holes of your baby’s feeding cup regularly.
  • Always throw away leftover baby food. To avoid waste, prepare very small amounts and freeze in individual containers.
  • Don’t reheat cooked baby food unless you’re able to bring it to a boil, and cook it thoroughly for at least five minutes to kill bacteria.
  • If you’re using a microwave, follow the manufacturer’s instructions exactly for times. Stir the food thoroughly to ensure that the heat is evenly distributed.
  • • Any fresh fruit that’s easy to hold, such as a banana or peach peel and remove any seeds.
    • Vegetables, particularly carrots, cut in to a shape that’s easy to grasp. Don’t cut them too small.
    • Pieces of dry, sugar free cereal.
    • Whole wheat bread or crackers (with out grains), toast slices, bread sticks, or rice cakes.
    • Cooked pasta shapes.

Make Meal Times Fun

It’s frustrating to find that good food is being thrown on the floor or smeared over the high chair, but remember that your baby will eat if she’s hungry. If she starts to throw food, she’s probably bored with eating because she’s had enough, so she’s moving on to experiment with the textures instead. Try tempting your older baby to try new tastes with fun food such as the example given here, and she’ll learn to see meal times as enjoyable occasions.

Finger Foods

Once your baby is more than seven or eight months and has been weaned onto solid foods, she’ll want to try feeding herself, so give her easy to hold finger foods. Try.

Suggested Menus For An Older Baby

Posted in Baby Caring Tips