If there is anything that our modern culture gets totally wrong, it’s how to feed babies and properly introduce solid foods. Pediatricians, dieticians, and other “experts” are quick to recommend that the perfect first food for babies at about the age of 4-6 months is rice cereal.
Not only is this advice completely misguided, it is also extremely harmful to the long term health of the child. Such advice contributes greatly to the epidemic of fat toddlers and the growing childhood obesity crisis.
Rice cereal is not a healthy first food for babies
Rice cereal is an extremely high glycemic food. This means that it spikes the blood sugar rapidly. It also contains ample amounts of double sugar (disaccharide) molecules, which are extremely hard for 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.
Interestingly, avoidance of allergies is one of the reasons cited by pediatricians for using rice cereal as the first food! While rice may be gluten free, it is by no means disaccharide free. Thus, it can contribute to the development of allergies and other autoimmune disorders just the same as a gluten containing cereal such as wheat or spelt. This is why going “gluten free” does not solve digestive ailments in the majority of children with autoimmune issues linked to grain allergies.
This approach may reduce symptoms somewhat, but it does not solve the problem entirely. The disaccharide molecule is still present in high amounts in gluten free grains. A similarly hard to digest starch molecule is present in grain substitutes such as potato flour, arrowroot, bean flours, etc.
Rice Cereal Now, Weight Issues Later?
Why then, is rice cereal so very popular as a first food to feed babies? One reason is that it is so readily accepted by the baby (who wouldn’t like a food that spikes the blood sugar? It is a bit of a “high” after all) and it fills them up like a lead brick leading to longer and more frequent periods of sleeping and more passive behavior in general. Be aware that there are still some misinformed doctors that advise mothers of babies that do not sleep well to introduce rice cereal as early as 3 months old – sometimes right into the baby bottle if the tongue thrust reflex hasn’t yet disappeared preventing the baby from taking food off a spoon! This is a recipe for childhood weight problems if I’ve ever heard one.
If your baby zonks out right after eating on a frequent basis, this is a major clue that what the child has just eaten was not easily digested (this goes for breastfeeding too .. a poor diet that is not digested well by the breastfeeding Mother will result in toxins in her breastmilk which will have an opiate like effect on the child).
Dr. McBride’s book mentioned above discusses this huge issue of toxins from undigested food and gut pathogens in the breastmilk as well. The same goes for adults, by the way. If you get sleepy after eating, it’s because what you just ate isn’t getting handled very well by your gut. The body is basically compensating for the brick in your stomach by putting you to sleep so that a sufficient amount of energy can be diverted to digestion.
Even Health Canada recognizes the dangers of cereal as a first food for babies and recommends against it.
So What is the Right First Food for Babies?
A baby’s digestive system is much better equipped to handle fats and proteins than carbohydrates. For this reason, a wonderful first food for babies is a soft boiled egg yolk from a pastured hen. Take care to only use the yolk and not the egg white which contains difficult to digest proteins. For my own children, I started giving a taste of a soft boiled egg yolk from my own plate starting at about 4-6 months old. Just a taste! If the child is completely uninterested, then try again in a week or two.
If the child likes the little taste that you put on her tongue or lip, then give her two tastes the next day and three tastes the next day, gradually building up to the entire egg yolk. Never force the child to eat. Remember that egg yolk is an extremely rich food and force feeding any rich food can cause the child to vomit.
Benefits of Egg Yolk for Babies
Egg yolk from pastured chickens contain ample amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and natural cholesterol which are critical to a child’s mental development and may be lacking in breastmilk depending on the quality of the mother’s diet. Children who receive sufficient omega 3 fats in their diet tend to speak clearly and understand verbal direction from the parents at a very early age.
I just went back and looked at my children’s baby books and all 3 of them (even the boys) spoke short sentences by 15-17 months of age. First words (Mama or Dada) occurred around 7 months. While these sentences were very simple (“Get that”, “Don’t want that”, “More of this”) I have no doubt that getting ample omega-3 fats from their diet played a big part in their ease of communicating at an early age. The pronunciation was clear enough to be understood even by those outside the family too.
At 6 Months of Age
At about 6 months of age, grate a bit of raw, grassfed beef or chicken liver into the warm egg yolk for baby to eat. This mimics the traditional practice of African mothers who would chew raw liver and then give small amounts to their babies as a first food.
Make sure that the raw liver is frozen for a minimum of 14 days as recommended by the USDA to eliminate any risk of parasites. Mashed banana is also a wonderful carbohydrate to add around this time. Banana digests very easily due to the copious amounts of amylase present. When the enzyme is present in the food, there is no need for baby’s small intestine to produce it herself.
If you can’t source quality raw liver in your area, desiccated liver powder can be used instead.
At Age 10 Months
At the age of 10 months or so, add pureed meats, fruits and vegetables. Introduce one at a time to reduce any chance of a reaction. Best also to avoid high starch veggies like potatoes and sweet potato. These veggies contain very complex starch molecules. They are much more difficult to digest for baby than non-starchy vegetables. Take the time to make your babyfood at home with organic ingredients, and mash the veggies withgrassfed butter.
It is worth the effort! Organic jarred baby food is not only overpriced. It is microwaved, watered down and contains no healthy fats to facilitate absorption.
Consumption of veggies with a bit of healthy fat like butter increases mineral absorption tremendously! You can freeze your homemade baby food in ice cube trays. A quick thaw in a small sauce pan (not the microwave!) makes for a fast and nutritious meal.
Soups made with homemade broth rank as one of the most nutritious foods for babies at this age. The gelatin in the homemade broth is protective against any intestinal bugs. It facilitates digestion too so that baby absorbs as many nutrients as possible.
When Should Grains be Introduced?
It’s a good idea to delay introduction of grain based foods and starchy vegetables for as long as possible. Grains are the hardest foods to digest of all.
Some experts advise that a child pass his/her second birthday before eating these foods. Whatever you decide, it is wise to forgo them until well after the first birthday. Even then, the grains should be properly prepared. This means they are either sprouted, sour leavened or soaked to ensure maximum digestibility. This careful preparation breaks down some of the hard to digest starches, gluten and anti-nutrients such as phytic acid.
It will take every ounce of your will power to keep the grain based foods out of your child’s mouth until well after her first birthday. In fact, the longer you can delay, the better. Teething biscuits, cheerios, crackers, and bread are all favorite foods for moms to feed as soon as the child can sit up in a high chair and grab from a plate. The first thing most parents give a baby at a restaurant is bread from the bread basket.
Babies may love it, but don’t do it!
Resist the temptation to use these foods as a pacifier. Commit to offering only truly nourishing fare at such a young age. The time will come soon enough when your child will have more control over his/her food choices. Wisely use this time of complete control to make sure every calorie baby eats is nutrient dense and easily digested!
Skip the Fruit Juice!
On a final note, whatever you do, skip the fruit juice! Fruit juice from the store, even if organic, is just sugar water. All the nutrition, enzymes and probiotics has been pasteurized away. It just spikes the blood sugar and increase the risk of obesity.
Juice also kills a child’s appetite for hours, even a day or two. Many a Mom has told me that when she took away the fruit juice, within a few days, a picky eater suddenly started eating!
The one exception would be freshly pressed juice diluted with some filtered water. Fresh fruit juice is full of enzymes and nutrition and would be an acceptable drink for baby on occasion. This is acceptable after age 10 months or so.
Still unsure where to start? This video on how to prepare the best first food for baby can help too!
My 9 month old son, at this point, is allergic to eggs. We are working on healing his gut so that all of his “allergies” will hopefully pass. But I would really like to start feeding him the frozen, grated liver. But all the websites I have looked at are telling me to put it on an egg yoke. Would it be fine to simply mix it into a little veggie puree rather than an egg yoke?
That should be fine!
I have a 9 month old, who’s my third baby. Because she’s had MRSA infections twice now, I have been reluctant to allow her to eat anything (thank you for your article on natural MRSA treatments, by the way. Carrie has helped us greatly!) because I have many food sensitivities and worry she may as well. She always seem to find the older kid’s crumbs on the floor, and I know she’s consumed at least a few grains of rice. In your opinion, how vigilant should I be in making certain she doesn’t get hold of these things? Is there something I can do to help her tummy in the instance that she consumes these things? It’s very small quantities, but the word “rot” has me concerned! I myself have fed her some banana and a little apple, both I’ve mixed with breast milk. Thank you for all the informative articles you provide to your readers!
Let’s not get carried away with causality on the basis of one family experience: your children ate eggs and are articulate, but that is no evidence of a causal link. My son has never eaten eggs, except in cake. He is no poster child for good toddler eating, exactly the opposite. Tomato ketchup is his main vegetable and lives off fishfingers, hummus, white toast and cake. He is highly articulate though – this is more likely because he didn’t watch TV before he was 2 years old, his favourite activity is being read stories, and spends a lot of time 1:1 with highly articulate adults. Sharing experience is great, but maybe be a bit more rigorous about the science.
It’s her point of view… Let her share it. If you pride yourself on feeding your child cake, fish fingers, white toast …. Lady then that’s your thing. To each their own.
Clearly – you’ve not done any research, or even visited the Weston A Price Foundation website. You’ve probably shot your kids up with vaccines too. Oh well, some people love their slavery.
What about coconut milk? Not as a replacement for breast milk but as an addition to the diet. Like 2-3 oz per day. Is it easily digested? For a 6-7 month old.
Thanks
I wouldn’t use it until after a year old. If the baby eats food in addition to breastmilk at that age, it should be pureed veggies, fruits and meats.
I like this article overall but I take issue to this line: “If your baby zonks out right after eating on a frequent basis, this is a major clue that what the child has just eaten was not easily digested (this goes for breastfeeding too .. a poor diet that is not digested well by the breastfeeding Mother will result in toxins in her breastmilk which will have an opiate like effect on the child).” I don’t doubt that much of the time when we get sleepy it’s because there’s something in the food. However, I don’t think that in the case of breastfeeding or even formula feeding, babies fall right asleep because of said toxins. I am more likely to believe that it’s the warmth of the food and the relaxation during the feeding (especially the hormones released while nursing) that are more likely to make a baby fall asleep while nursing. Not everything involving sleeping after eating and such doesn’t always relate to toxins. Great read overall otherwise.
You feed your baby formula. Enough said. Let’s move on.
My baby loves her formula! She gets Similac stage 2 now that she is a year old, plus she’s eating plenty of solid foods. She’s so healthy and gorgeous with smooth beautiful skin and silky hair. She’s not overly chubby or always sick like some babies I know. And she has no weird hippie food intolerances or allergies. God bless Similac and its complete nutrition.
Glad she is doing well, but unfortunately a year old is not old enough to assess health and commercial formulas are not a good choice. A much healthier choice to the commercial formulas that are loaded with GMOs (baby is a guinea pig, basically) is a homemade formula. Breastfeeding is the best choice, but when that is not an option, homemade is much better than commercial concoctions loaded with additives, GMOs and chemicals. Here is a recipe and video. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/video-homemade-milk-based-baby-formula/
One year is old enough to assess health. Her pediatrician does it every time she sees her, and my daughter is picture perfect at each visit. Her pediatrician (who happens to also be a Natural Parent friendly doctor) has no problem with Similac, so I think I’ll listen to the expert. My daughter has been sick before, but only twice with a fever and cold, and both times she recovered quickly. I gave her elderberry syrup, per her pediatrician’s recommendation, which helped a lot, so I’m not completely opposed to hippie home remedies.
And, my child is no more a guinea pig than babies who ingest GMO’s in their mother’s breast milk. Unless a breast feeding mother goes completely GMO free, which I’m sure is expensive not to mention difficult to do (as there are GMOs in more foods than people are aware of), a baby is going to consume GMOs one way or the other. Even if I did make the effort to go GMO free, my baby doesn’t have every meal with me. I would not dream of asking my mother in law if the soup or whatever she lovingly fixed for my baby has any GMO ingredients. Lol. My baby is perfectly fine and is thriving due to what she is consuming now. The way my baby fed is the right way.
My daughter was on Similac Stage 1 Organic, and also Similac Stage 1 Advance GMO-free before I switched her to stage 2, and the stage 2 does not, to my knowledge have a GMO free or organic version. But it doesn’t matter, because she is eating mostly solid food now, with her formula as a supplement for the complete nutrition that she needs, which has obviously benefited her up to this point in her life. She has crawled, stood, walked, ran, and climbed faster than any other baby I know her age. I attribute much of that to being breast fed in her first few months, which is all she needed, receiving complete nutrition via her formula, and to her great genes. Formula will not make her obese. No one in her family is obese, and she’ll pick up her father’s and my good habits.
I’m sure the parents of the starving babies and children in third world countries would love to have the branded baby formulas we are fortunate to have here. Fed is best.
You can assess health at that moment in time, but you absolutely cannot assess long term effects of formula feeding, excessive vaccination, pesticides and other synthetic assaults that children are regularly enduring today. Problems from these can takes years to manifest. For example, adolescent onset diabetes from the DPT jabs can manifest as late as puberty … which is 10 years or more after the child received that vaccines series. Also, asthma and eczema issues from formula feeding sometimes don’t manifest until the child is school age or fully onto solid foods.
Also, at a year old, only a few milestones have been reached. Many children don’t manifest autism symptoms until 18 months-3 years old. Until a child is in high school and the immune system fully developed, you really cannot assess the full impact of short sighted/damaging decisions such as commercial formula feeding.
No one has 100% certainty about anything long term. You can cite all the scientific studies you want, but most studies are flawed and/or biased and are of insufficient scope. I breast fed my infant then gave her formula. She got the absolute best of both worlds, and it’s evident when I look into her sparkling, clear eyes. I am sick and tired of seeing formula demonized by every crunchy hippie out there. There are mothers out there who don’t know any better, who will follow these blogs, and not give their babies formula because they don’t want to be judged. Then their children will suffer. Screw that. There is nothing wrong with formula. It’s food. Starch, protein, fat, and micro-nutrients, all the components needed to sustain life. Does anyone honestly think that the employees and people who make Similac, people who have children themselves, want to poison babies and cause long term harm to them? I seriously doubt it. Hysteria and conspiracy theories have never held much water with me. When you go out several years in a child’s life and examine whatever ailments they may have, you can’t just say “Oh, they have this because they were formula fed.” Yeah, he was formula fed YEARS AGO. What has happened lately that could have possibly caused what he is going through? You really should consider that too.
I know several young adults who were formula fed in my family who do not have asthma, eczema, or any other issues you mention. I was breast fed by my mother for a year and then formula fed, and I am healthier than most people I know (not overweight, no mental illnesses, no weird food allergies, and minimal environmental allergies, to name a few positives). I never had eczema or asthma when I was school age. Sure, what I have just cited is purely anecdotal, but more credible and real than any “evidence” I have seen provided thus far demonstrating commercial formulas are the devil. Asthma and eczema can be caused by other things by the way: exposure to second hand smoke, household mold, allergens, or environmental pollutants would be the more likely culprits for a child to develop asthma, breastfed or not. Since my baby has a strong immune system from having so much complete nutrition it’s highly UNLIKELY she will develop asthma.
I can assess my daughter’s long term health not only by looking at her current state, but by also looking at her ancestry and lineage. Part of her ethnicity is that of a people known for having the most centenarians of any country. She comes from great grandparents on both sides who lived into their 90’s and 100’s. There is also a history of athleticism on both sides, up to and including her parents. There are very low incidences of cancer and other non-lifestyle diseases within the families. No obesity to speak of. The one thing they all have in common: they all consumed food. Formula is food. Period. My child has access to nutrition, education, love, and attention, which is more than many underprivileged kids in this very country and even the entire planet have. I am thankful that we are able to afford to provide for her in the way that we have, formula included. It is more likely than not my child will outlive the children of most of my peers, and all the people reading this, assuming she doesn’t succumb to something non-natural like a car accident. And, she won’t have autism either. I’d place money on that.
Sounds like you feel 100% confident in your choices. Good for you. As a mother who is much farther down the track, I can say that it is best not to be so smug about it if your child is only 1 year old especially when such a poor choice as commercial formula was used. I weaned my son after 2 years of breastfeeding onto soy milk which was a terrible choice, but it was based on bad information that I had at the time (in the late 1990’s soy was considered a superfood which is a complete lie). I worried for YEARS that he would have issues at puberty which is what soy consumed as a baby tends to do to boys as it is so estrogenic (many baby boys fed soy never have a normal puberty). Fortunately, he wasn’t on the soy very long (only 6 months) and has been on grassfed raw milk since then. All was well (he is almost 18 years old now), but I can say that you shouldn’t be so smug especially having used commercial formula which has no redeeming value whatsoever (there is no “best of both worlds” with that choice). You have no idea if mistakes you make when they are younger are going to come home to roost later. Best to admit if you made a mistake (which you did using commercial formula) and try to mitigate the potential problems instead of insisting it was a good choice and singing the praises of a company that is harming children and making huge profits.
hi
i notice when you talk about bone broths you don’t talk about pork broth, is there a reason? is pork broth just as good? also, if the only toxin free liver i can get is chicken liver, would that work?
Pork broth is fine if that’s the cleanest source you can find. Yes, chicken liver is fine too.
What are some good grain free baby food books? Seems like their are a million out there, but tend to lean towards unhealthy options. Thanks!!
My almost 9 month old won’t tolerate ANY food. He refuses it. If he does take 1/4 of a teaspoon (total- several very small bits) he throws up. He is very very big and solely breastfed. Should I be concerned? I first tried soft egg yolk, then beef broth, cod liver oil, avocado, banana, mango, bits of meat, liver, etc.
My now 12 year old refused solid foods until she was 10 months. My 9 month old just started accepting them about a week ago. I would say that as long as he is growing and doesn’t seem hungry, he should be fine. Offer solids every week or so to see if he’s ready yet, but I wouldn’t be worried.
Hi Sarah! Thanks for the great article. It made me made the decision months ago to delay starting solids with our now 16 month old son and I’ve been really happy we did. We are still dairy, nut, soy and gluten free, but now I am considering slowly introducing grains. I’d like to do it in the most responsible manner possible. Do you have a suggestion for what grain to introduce first? I was thinking maybe some soaked oatmeal would be good, perhaps using steel-cut oats if the texture didn’t bother him too much. We also have some local wheat berries (heritage wheats and spelt varieties) and our own mill, so I’d also love to use these to introduce grains to him as well. Thanks in advance for your advice!
How many times a week can bub eat liver?