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
ummmm….plants are alive, too and often have to be killed in order to be consumed. Just because they aren’t “cute” and don’t tug your heart strings doesn’t mean they aren’t living, too. Maybe we should eat rocks.
how ridiculous.. putting something dead into your babies mouth.. something murdered.. how repulsive.
Then tell me why vegans crave for meat and eat meatless burgers and things like that to fool their bodies of what their bodies need? I guess it is your inside voice tells you: “You are starving me. I need nourishment not a constant body cleanse.” I always hear vegans talk about how they miss meat the most (notice, not sugar, the most addictive food) and they never stop this craving while sugar takes about 2 weeks to overcome.
And a word about murder. Don’t you kill plant to eat it? What all vegans consider to be alive is enzymes in food that makes food alive vs. cooked food and not literally alive, kicking, and moving. Raw meat and eggs plus raw dairy have enzymes as well, so it is alive food too. Also, while we need to kill an animal in order to eat it or cut a plant from it’s roots, eggs and dairy are not get “murdered” at all. Plants die when you cut them of. You can prolong their freshness with moisture and refrigeration. But don’t we put meat in a fridge and a freezer to prolong it’s freshness as well? Oh boy, we should all be ashamed of killing and eating animals and plants. We can’t stop eating, right?
So my baby gets the best, full of enzymes and richest live food available in form of egg yoke.
Common, check an egg at least, there are no live chicks in it, I promise.
Love this comment.
that poor pile of murdered soybeans you ate for lunch. how heartless to not let them sprout and produce their own little sproutlings. cut down at their prime of life. they never had a chance. all so you could not starve to death.
And what about all the insects killed by the insecticides, so vegans can have all their soy??
I assume you send your babies out to graze.
meat lobbyists score again.
Children, parents and human beings in general win when they eat the meat they were designed to eat.
Well, egg beaters have NEVER been an option in my house..LOL
Processed eggs might cause problems in the blood .. like Egg Beaters or something like that. Like most information, you have to be very careful how it is interpreted and who conducted the study.
Yep…we found an Amish farmer who pastures his animals and we get our grass fed raw milk, cheese, cream, butter, eggs and meats from him. We have to travel an hour each way, but it’s worth the trip.
I was going to share this on Facebook until I saw the MOX NEWS logo at the end… is this a real story or some sort of parody?
I saw that too. “Unreal and Biased”?
Woot! That’s how we’re going with the little man. None of this rice cereal crap for us! Egg yolks from our Amish friends and he can gnaw on whatever we’re eating. 🙂 He is exclusively breastfed right now, and he can’t handle it when I eat wheat, so we’re not introducing grains to him till he is well over a year old, maybe closer to 2.
@Eloah…where do you get your medical info from? I’ve never heard any such thing about eggs causing blood cells to stack? I’ve been eating eggs since I was a baby, I fed my daughters eggs when they were babies and now my 8 month old granddaughter enjoys poached eggs. None of us have heart disease or high blood pressure or high cholesterol. I HAD high cholesterol when I fell for the low fat high carb diet that conventional medicine is pushing on everyone, but I dropped my cholesterol by eating grass fed full fat meats, eggs, cheese, butter, lard and bacon and cutting the supposedly healthy whole grains and vegetable oils.