Babies and Food: Preparing Healthy Meals at Home for Infants

By Damian Papworth

One of the major events in your child's maturation process is the introduction of solid food instead of breast milk or formula. For most children, this occurs sometime around six months mark, but children aren't ready for table food until around the age of two years. Thus, baby food must be specially prepared, made so that a young child can easily eat and digest. While fast food and convenience are more a part of households now than ever before, that approach should not be taken with something as important as introducing children to food and nutrition, especially since those first years are a time of so much learning and development.

So many important benchmarks for development occur during those first months, when every day is a new adventure and every new lesson a huge challenge. For a child to be able to develop and learn at the average rate, it's important to be providing a diet rich in vitamins and minerals for growth. After all, these first years will provide the blueprint for how your child's body handles food and nutrients for the rest of his or her life. Making smart, informed choices about which food items to introduce and when does more than just feed your child. It also informs the energy he or she has to learn and grow.

While purchasing baby food has been a long standing tradition in parenting, more and more parents are opting to make at least a portion of the food they serve their children at home. Making baby food is an excellent choice on a number of different levels. Many children have food allergies, and preparing food at home makes it easy to single out what potentially troublesome ingredients are. Furthermore, a great deal of store-bought baby food has additives, and preparing your own meals is a great deal healthier.

The economic benefits of making your own baby food cannot be overstated. In tough economic times, spending the extra money for brand-name goods for babies in the hopes that there is something better in those cans or jars is a practice that should be avoided or forgotten. There's nothing more nutritious in store-bought baby food. Usually, the actual difference is merely additives!

One important fact to remember: The World Health Organization and The American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend that, until six months of age, children be breast-fed. This is the optimal source of nutrition, and prevents later iron deficiency. Try to keep that in mind when making your food choices.

The best way to tell if a child is ready to start solid foods is by paying attention to what stage in development he or she is at. Are they able to sit up and fight the urge to push solid items out of their mouth with their tongue? Then it's time to begin on solid foods.

Since babies are learning all of the time, it's safe to say their bodies are learning, too. Since children are not used to processing solid food, be advised that there might be a brief period of constipation during the switch. It's nothing to worry about, but is something that occasionally happens. This is why it's particularly helpful to start with a number of simple fruits and vegetables, that baby's bodies find easy to digest. Among them are avocados, sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, and apples. These foods are also simple to puree, a must when making baby food, and are known to prompt fewer allergic reactions.

When babies are starting to eat, an excellent first recipe is cooked and pureed carrots. A root vegetable packed with beta carotene and vitamin C, as well as calcium, carrots provide much of the nutrition that children need to grow. First peel the carrots, then steam them. After that, pureeing them should be a breeze. - 17269

About the Author:

Having an infant does not need to spoil your home. Damian Papworth understands that high chair aesthetics are important. Yes you can purchase baby high chairs that look good in your home.