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One of the most misguided and damaging pieces of advice coming from the vast majority of “experts” is to give rice cereal as a baby first food around the age of 4-6 months. This advice is extremely harmful to the long term health of the child, contributing greatly to the epidemic of fat toddlers and the exploding problem of childhood obesity.
Rice cereal is never a healthy baby first food. Not only is it an extremely high glycemic food when eaten alone (spikes the blood sugar) but it also contains ample amounts of double sugar (disaccharide) molecules, which are extremely hard for such an immature digestive system to digest. The small intestine of a baby mostly produces only one carbohydrate enzyme, lactase, for digestion of the lactose in milk. It produces little to no amylase, the enzyme needed for grain digestion until around age one.
Now, at least one governmental body is waking up to the harmful notion of cereal grains as the “ideal” baby first food.
Health Canada Recommends Traditional First Foods
Health Canada in collaboration with the Canadian Pediatric Society, Dietitians of Canada and Breastfeeding Committee for Canada has issued new guidelines for transitioning a baby to solid food and two of the first weaning foods recommended?
Meat and eggs!
While these guidelines are certain to rile vegetarian and vegan groups, the fact is that meat and eggs are indeed the best weaning foods for a baby. Not only are these animal foods extremely easy to digest compared with cereal grains, but they also supply iron right at the time when a baby’s iron stores from birth start to run low.
The inclusion of meat in these baby first food guidelines is in line with the wisdom of Ancestral Cultures which frequently utilized animal foods for weaning. A traditional first food in African cultures is actually raw liver which the mother would pre-chew in small amounts and then feed to her child.
The guidelines specifically note the role that ancient wisdom played in the decision to no longer recommend cereal grains and instead suggest meat:
While meat and fish are traditional first foods for some Aboriginal groups, the common practice in North America has been to introduce infant cereal, vegetables, and fruit as first complementary foods.
Soft boiled egg yolks are also an ideal choice as a baby first food as they supply ample iron as well as choline and arachidonic acid which are both critical for optimal development of the baby’s brain which grows as its most rapid rate the first year of life.
Unfortunately, while the suggestion of meat and eggs is a good one, the joint statement from Health Canada also inexplicably includes tofu and legumes which are both a terrible choice as a baby first food.
The starch in legumes would cause the same digestive problems as rice cereal and the endocrine-disrupting isoflavones in tofu would be a disaster for baby’s delicate and developing hormonal system.
But, let’s give credit where credit is due.At least meat and eggs are appropriately included on the baby first food list.
Good on you Health Canada! Perhaps your neighbor country to the South will wake up and get a clue about how to properly feed babies based on your lead.
I’m not holding my breath.
Reference
Meat, tofu among recommended iron rich foods for Canadian babies
Actually, Grandma use to let the babies gnaw on big fat pieces of bacon and stake.
Weren’t there problems with splinters?
My baby just turned 6 months old and loooves egg yolk with liver and is starting meat, it’s been great. I never considered rice cereal thanks to Sarah.
The thing is, you could probably ask any grandmother im sure meat or non-gerber food was the menu for any baby:)
good meat, fish, eggs and veggies are far better for a growing baby than crappy flour/rice gruel that baby can´t digest -so awesome
Sally Fallon has a recipe for baby formula for those that can not breastfeed that includes liver.
my mom started me on liver & hard boiled egg yolks as a first food- of course she started it when I was 7 days old but aside from that I guess she knew what she was doing 🙂
🙂 Hey, she was eager for the benefits for you. 🙂
We started giving our baby some pureed venison around that age and she loved it!
I’m so interested in getting to the bottom of some contrasting information I’ve heard. On the one hand, some call animal foods “easy to digest” and grains as “hard to digest.” On the other hand, some point to “bowel transit time” as an indicator of the relative ease/difficulty of digestion, and say that short bowel transit time is indication of ease of digestion. My INSTINCT (given what I know about the relative nutrient levels of animal vs. plant foods) would say that if it is true that animal foods take longer to get through the digestive system it could be because there are far more nutrients to digest, and so in that regard the longer bowel transit time would be a good thing.
What do you know about the idea of “bowel transit time” and whether short or long transit time means anything regarding nutrition and health?
Thanks for another great post!
bowel transit time is a hard thing to go by, because food as a whole can take up to 48 hours to be fully digested. Some keys to digestion – easy to digest is not necessarily a good thing. Simple sugars as opposed to complex carbohydrates are easy to digest, because it is already broken down to 1 sugar molecule. This is why if you eat a sugar packed meal or white breads, rices, etc. you tend to be hungrier sooner. Complex carbs are made up of more than one chain of sugar so they need to be broken down and then broken down a second time into sucralose (table sugar). This is a longer process which leaves you feeling fuller longer and helps to boost metabolism as well. I can’t quite remember now how it works out for meats, which are mainly fats and proteins. Fat digestion starts as early as your mouth, as saliva begins to breakdown the fat molecules. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated are the better fats. Saturated fats have no double carbon bonds hence the carbon is fully “saturated” with hydrogen. Fats are an essential part of the diet because they provide the body with energy. I do believe that fats move slowly through the digestive system, as do proteins
And not to mention the complications to digestion when inadvisable food combinations are taken. Carbs such as rice would produce a different microbial balance, when taken with, say, egg yolk or some “predigested liver” (as in ancestral cultures). And that would result in a more difficult digestion.
I also forgot about fiber – soluable and insoluable. Insoluable fibers do not get digested (good example is corn skin) soluable fiber like what you find in oatmeal is very good for cholesterol because it binds to bile and make the liver produce more bile which the body uses cholesterol to help the liver produce bile.
That’s great! I’m Canadian but have been living in the States for 7 years now. I get excited when I see Canada make strides like this and can only hope that the States will follow! HOPE…
Some fall apart pot roast sounds delicious right now lol.