Tips, tricks and babies
how to get your babies to be great eaters
If you get off to a good start with feeding your baby lots of different types of healthy food, there is a good chance you won’t have the common struggles of the picky older child. Here are the things I like to start babies off with and the reasons why:
Start with grains and vegetables. You’ll start with purees and move onto to soft, finger food as your child seems ready. I feel it’s really important to start with non sweet foods. We as human are hard wired to love sweets and even breast milk is sweet so if babies get used to sweets, they may reject the non sweet foods you offer.
If they dislike a food and spit it out, don’t keep trying that food. Everyone is entitled to their tastes and babies are no different. Even if you feel this food is a must, please move on. You can and should, introduce this food again, but give it some time (at least a few months). People’s taste change so there is a good chance your child will like this food in the future if it’s not associated with bad feelings like having it be forced on them.
After grains and vegetables and other non sweet, healthy, baby safe foods, you can move onto fruit.
Don’t put salt or butter on their vegetables (most of the time). Just like sugar, we are hard wired to prefer fat and salt and I think it’s important to get babies to love the actual taste of the vegetable and not the taste of salt or butter.
Give them as much variety as you possibly can. I made it my mission to have my young children try every vegetable and fruit and whole grain I could get my hands on. I remember buying kumquats in Chinatown when they were 18 months (after they tried dim sum for the first time-boy was that fun). I had never had a kumquat and wasn’t sure if they would like it, even though they had loved every other fruit they had tried (except avocado) and i watched in amazement as they devoured the cute little orange fruit while their eyes teared up from the tartness. This love of kumquats did not actually last, but that first time was very fun for all three of us.
Don’t give your baby food with added sugar or processed food for as long as you can hold out. This is the time when you have complete control over what they eat. You can set up great feelings and tastes with healthy food. There is no reason to feed them anything artificial or anything that doesn’t have a lot of nutrients. That will happen on its own once they are in school and are given food by other people and see friends eating cookies and chips. That’s all fine, but if you hold out as long as you can, the rewards for your child and for you will be amazing.