Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
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
My granddaughter started eating meat at 6 months. She loves it!! Nothing gross about giving your baby the nutrition he/she needs.
My girls have been eating eggs, meat, nuts, cheese and whatever else I eat since they were 5-6 mos. at that age id just Smash it up for them.They also breastfed at that age too. They don’t have any food allergies!
Thank you for your informative posts. I really enjoy reading them and have learned a lot. I have a lot of health problems and have been trying to change my diet. My husband and I are in the clumbsy stages of trying to get to the GAPs diet by at least trying to be gluten free and trying to get to grain free and incorporating the diet over time. I’d like to get to GAPs or a paleo diet by the end of the year. Your recent posts about fats and oils have been really helpful. We are hoping to have kids in the near future so this post was great to read. It really does make sense, especially to someone who is knowledgeable about healthy foods and what is really good for you to eat. Thanks again!
thats gross! can’t trust them..
My baby is 9.5 months old and her favorite food is gelled organic grass fed beef stock.
Just read this article in my daily newsletter from the academy of nutrition & dietetics:
Real food holler!
#3’s first food was a nectarine he attacked while I was holding him and having a snack. After that day I pretty much fed him whatever I was eating with the exception of shellfish, chocolate & peanuts. Avocado, black beans & salmon are among his current favorites.
oops, forgot to click the box to notify me of follow up comments…
Shannon eggs cause the red blood cells to stack 30 minutes after consumption which is not good. Wonders if you missed the memo, eggs are chicken menstrum
This is a blood condition that can be caused by poor protein digestion or too much protein in the body, not just by eggs.
Other known causes are stresses caused by coffee(caffeine) cigarettes as well as being dehydrated.
Well you’re just dumber than dirt, do you ever think to at least check Wikipedia before you rebroadcast your accumulated ignorance?
“Rouleaux (stacks of red blood cells) formation is retarded by albumin proteins.”
ALBUMIN! Ring a bell? No? Didn’t think so, I’ll give you a clue, as in EGG WHITES. Is it starting to make sense? This is why eggs are a Super Food.
My advice is that you keep on avoiding them, the sooner people like you go extinct the better life will be for the rest of us.
It’s pretty ignorant of you to not know the difference between ALBUMIN and ALBUMEN Albumin is produced in the liver and found in the blood!!! It’s the main protein in blood plasma. High Albumin levels in the blood are almost always caused by DEHYDRATION.
ALBUMEN is the name for an egg white – it contains ALBUMIN proteins. Egg white contains almost every amino acid required for life – Which makes sense considering an egg is the building block for a life.
Sorry conrack – I misread your post as a snap at me, and got a little defensive!
Well you’re just dumber than dirt, do you ever think to at least check Wikipedia before… wait, I already said that.
And my comment was for ELoah, I should have put that in the comment. 🙂
While all of the information on egg whites is true, you don’t feed the whites to a baby, only the yolks. After they are a year old they may have the whites, but that is the portion of an egg which will produce an allergic reaction if they’re going to have a reaction at all.
And never rely on wikipedia for information. Not a reliable source for anything. Neither are web sites from the dot gov or the dot edu or the dot medical sites. Maybe mayo clinic occasionally, but otherwise keep going before relying on “searched web info” for your bottom line advice. Take advice from people who have been there, done that. Anecdotal, yes, but much more reliable in real life.
D – yes egg whites are introduced later, but you can introduce scrambled eggs as soon as 9 months – sometimes even sooner if you have a food tolerant family. Egg white intolerence isn’t overly common. And even those intolerent of egg whites can sometimes handle them in small amounts. As for an egg allergy (about 1% of babies), babies can be allergic to both the whites and the yolks. Those who are allergic to yolks can usually tolerate whites and the other way around too. And most babies that are allergic to eggs don’t overcome this allergy until around 5 years old, and some are allergic for life. (though this article isn’t really about the whites!) 🙂
@ Jennifer: I never gave my kids scrambled eggs until they were older than 1 year, so I don’t know about all that information you gave, I only know what I was told by my elders, who never failed me on anything else. We only fed yolks, with added butter (real butter usually homemade) and sea salt. We didn’t go by science or percentages!
Wikipedia is certainly not a good or recommended source of any information, particularly for health. It is nearly totally controlled by the medical/pharmaceutical industry. Read it if you want to know when Johnny Depp was born, otherwise look elsewhere for the bottom line on science, health, and even history. It’s for crap, with powerful censors controlling information.
as for the last part – who cares? they’re tasty! we eat them fried, scrambled, boiled, raw, sunny side up. you may choose not to, more for those who do! (not to mention seeds are a kind of aborted life, too, if you snatch them out of nature before they can sprout and grow. you can’t get away from the fact that you must eat living things in order to survive.)
Don’t forget though, many people’s elders tell them to use rice cereal. Did your family have an egg allergy? Because the theory of an egg allergy must have come from somewhere…
How I feel about it – the instance of food allergies in children has risen by over 300% – and the regulations on food have gotten stricter before that. In generations before mine is a little absurd to wait 6 months to start solids and then once they started pretty much everything was fair game.
D – your elders were wise! As long as your kids are healthy now, then you did things right. Every family is different with different beliefs and ideals.
@ Jennifer: My elders didn’t even know about rice cereal. There was no such thing, but they did know about eggs.
I’m almost 60 y/o and just had my fourth grandchild on Wed. October 3rd, 2012. So even my Mom and mother-in-law didn’t know about rice cereal. When my oldest sister had her first baby in 1962, they had a product on the market called Pablum but my gramma’s told her it wasn’t necessary and to stay with real foods. We also didn’t feed our babies fruit until they were a year old, on the advice of elders, as well. I guess they knew about sugar problems! They always told us that the nutrients available in fruits were also available in other, less sweet foods. Their motto, more or less, was that you could get any child to eat something sweet, it’s just more appealing. So we were told to try to develop their palate to want other foods first. So that’s what we did. I don’t think the word allergy even entered the picture for my gramma’s generations, or even my Mom’s generation. In my family, I do not believe I was exposed to the word allergy until my third child was born in 1987 and even then it wasn’t a common issue with children. Convenience foods have made allergy a common word as well as a common issue because now every kid from birth through high school is allergic to at least five different things and needs this pill or that shot. It’s malarkey most of the time, and if they would change their dietary habits from boxed/convenience foods to real foods all of those allergies would most likely be taken care of – naturally.
D – I completely agree with convenience foods being a problem. Very insightful post, thank you very much for sharing that history!!
I do believe that many allergies and illnesses are food industry related (at least here in the united states) it’s all part of the effort to push prescription drugs in my opinion!
D,
I realize this is a old post.
But I’m older then you, and my kids are grown,..
Both my children got formula, and when they where 2 weeks old got that rice flakes junk mixed with there formula..
My two grown children are healthy, Slim, and active. with children of there own.
We didn’t hear about allergies back then, and they do not have any allergies.
My son has 3 grown kids, and one has allergies. She was nursed etc.
Now I have a 8 mo old, Great Grand Daughter, who is being nursed, and starting to eat fruit and Veggies. She is a chubby health happy baby, like all the other kids.
I think we go through different cycles all the time..
I thought meat for a baby was hard to digest , as it is for adults!!
What I like is the little baby food steamer (William Sonoma ),
You put veggies in there, it steams them, then the processor comes on and you have Organic steamed and Pureed , or larger pieces of baby food.
You really like to use statistics when it supports your arguments!
just because they “recommend” it doesn’t make it gospel. i see that chip on your shoulder over veganism is still nipping away at you. We need more love and acceptance in this world. Regardless if we agree on all matters one thing is for sure, staying divided rather than banning together to resolve planetary issues isn’t going to do anyone any good.
ELoah, what are you talking about? “Love and acceptance”. What do you mean? Sarah is giving nutritional advice based on research. If you love eating plants, it’s your choice. I want to read her articles because they give me great information. I am pretty sure Sarah loves you, vegans, very much, but it will not make her a lier to be political correct. She will tell you that what you do with your diet is unhealthy period. There are too many others who would sing to your ear.