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Many parents believe that baby cereals are the best first food for babies, but doctors are increasingly suggesting otherwise with more traditional foods that are easier to digest and less likely to trigger allergies gaining favor such as soft boiled egg yolk.
What is the best baby first food? This is a question all parents inevitably ask and the answer given by most pediatricians is rice cereal.
Unfortunately, any grain-based food is not a good idea for children only a few months old as a baby’s immature digestive system does not produce sufficient amylase, the enzyme required for digestion of carbohydrates. The fact that rice cereal is gluten-free makes no difference whatsoever – rice is still a carbohydrate and therefore very difficult for babies to handle digestively.
Incomplete digestion of rice cereal guarantees putrefaction in the gut leading to an imbalance of digestive flora and the potential for allergies and other autoimmune illnesses to develop down the road. In addition, much of today’s rice is contaminated with arsenic! This includes brown rice syrups used in powdered organic baby formula (best to always make homemade formula instead).
If rice cereal is not ideal for a baby as a first food, then what?
In this video lesson, I show you how to prepare the perfect first food for your baby around 4-6 months of age: egg yolk.
While egg white should not be given to babies under a year old, the egg yolk supplies critical brain-building cholesterol and fatty acids that will reward you with a child who speaks at an early age.
All 3 of my children were speaking short, yet complete sentences by a year old. I attribute this not only to extended breastfeeding but also to the brain-building nutrients supplied by their early first foods as practiced by Traditional Societies.
The video along with the recipe below shows you how to properly make a soft boiled egg to use the warm, liquid yolk as baby’s first food. Do not use the white as it is allergenic until a baby is over a year old.
Just give baby a taste or two at first. Even if they love it, eating the whole thing too fast (it’s very rich!) risks vomiting. Go slow!
Hint: Try making this recipe using quail eggs, as they are tiny and the perfect size for baby’s appetite.
Egg Yolk For Baby
The simple recipe below takes 3 minutes to prepare and is the ideal first food for your baby!
Note that egg yolk is recommended over cereal grains by Health Canada. It is unfortunate that the USA is still behind on this important baby weaning step.
Baby First Food Recipe
Recipe to make the best first food for baby as practiced by healthy, traditional cultures to boost intelligence and encourage early speaking.
Ingredients
- 1 egg preferably pastured or free range
- 1/2 tsp organic liver optional, grated
Instructions
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Boil the egg for 3 1/2 minutes. Crack the egg open (no need to peel) and carefully place the soft egg yolk into a bowl. Discard the shell and the egg white.
Stir in the optional liver (grated while still frozen is the easiest method).
Serve baby a taste or two building slowly over days and weeks as tolerated.
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Stir in the optional liver (grated while still frozen is the easiest method). Or use organic desiccated liver powder.
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Serve baby a taste or two building slowly over days and weeks as tolerated. Feeding to much too quickly risks vomiting as this is a very rich food!
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
The organic raw liver should be frozen for at least 14 days to ensure safety.
Alternatively, if a clean source for organ meats is not available, use desiccated liver pills and sprinkle 1/8 of a tsp into the warm yolk.
Do you recommend a type of raw liver? Lamb or chicken?
Hello Sarah,
Thanks for the polite response. I’m glad you agree that babies are not low carbers! And I understand the argument regarding amylase. However, as I tried to express, when we introduce foods like meat purées, yolk and liver, we are increasing calories, but basically only protein and fat calories. It seems logical to me that my baby needs, with any increase in calories, for the macronutrients to be balanced. So I serve him meat with fat and carbs (potato). I cannot serve him banana at every meal. He eats and is supposed to eat three meals with solids per day at his age.
It’s also kind of absurd when you think about it to believe that the only carb source a baby can have outside of milk is banana. Bananas are not available to all populations. They are only available to me here in France thanks to modern transportation. So if I were a logical, local-eating person, or just someone in the Middle Ages, I could not even offer any to my baby.
Also, perhaps a breast-feeding mom could get away with this by serving meat first and then offering the breast–only because the lactose comes before the protein and fat. However those of us who have to use formula cannot use such a tactic. Our babies get all the macronutrients at the same time. So if I serve meat and then a bottle, my baby is just getting more protein (and perhaps fat).
Another subject of interest is how all this affects their sleep. Nobody mentions this. My son never could nap after eating egg yolk until he was around 8 months old. When I feed him beef he almost never sleeps or for very long. Chicken, however, is fine. It’s curious and I wish people who focused on nutrition for babies would also focus on the effects on sleep because that is just as important.
I think a good book for you to read is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. W.A. Price. See how the 14 cultures he visited and observed at length fed their babies as they were weaning 🙂
Note also that Health Canada recommends meat, eggs and NOT cereals for babies as they wean in line with observations of healthy indigenous cultures. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/new-health-canada-guidelines-advise-meat-as-baby-first-food/
And, no, babies shouldn’t necessarily be eating three meals with solids. Only one of my (three) children did this before about age 18 months. Some babies take to solids much quicker than others. All three children are now teenagers or older now and equally healthy.
Thank-you. I just wanted to make sure he would not lack iron.
What you are doing with the desiccated liver seems fine to me given he doesn’t like the egg yolk.
Thank-you!
I have been trying for months to give my youngest baby (6th bio) solid foods. He is now 9 months old (16 pounds) but looks at the food, plays with it or gags as soon as the egg yolk touches his tongue. I have resorted to giving him the radiant life dessicated liver in a bit of water because I am nervous about his iron. Has anyone else had a child not want to eat solids? All my other children have eaten at 5 to 6 months. Some of my friends say, “food before one is just for fun,” but I want to make sure he does not have an issue being this late. I an lucky to get a teaspoon of food actually digested him a week! Thoughts? Ideas?
My third child didn’t eat much food until after age 1 … I did have success with blended soups and banana around 8 months.
Melissa, if you bottle-feed, you can put the yolk in with the milk. I did this for months and then one day he just accepted yolk. I used a hand held blender, but if I could go back I would just do as I describe below and then shake the purée into the milk.
However, it took a long time for him to be able to swallow it. I don’t know why nobody mentions this, but adding a very small amount of water will make it much easier for him to swallow because it is less dry. Even a soft boiled egg is a bit dry for them.
You can also mix egg yolk with other foods. My son took it with banana until he stopped liking that. I do a savory evening mixture. Vegetables are definitely tastier with bone broth. You can add the yolk to that, mashed well.
FYI I am totally against baby-led weaning. I want the food in his tummy, properly digested, not undigested in his poop or wasted on the floor. IMO, BLW is for rich people for whom an avocado costs nothing. That digusts me as I hate food waste.
Hello Sarah,
Can you PLEASE answer this question for me? I emailed a lot back and forth with Sally Fallon on the topic of feeding my baby, and she gave no answer to this inquiry.
Doesn’t a baby need carbs? It makes sense to me that when a baby starts eating solids, it needs to be similar to breast milk in macronutrients. Too much protein is TOXIC especially to infants. So following Fallon’s advice to feed my baby only yolks, liver, and meat purées sounded like absolute insanity to me. I feed my son, now almost 10 months old, a portion of liver once a week now and one egg yolk a day. A baby doesn’t need additional protein without AS WELL additional fat and carbs. Do you not agree? Can you please explain why? Breast milk is a high carb, high fat, low protein food. So why would you put a baby high protein, low carb diet??? Bananas are absolutely not enough! My son drank a full bottle, half a yolk (I do not give a full yolk with a bottle because that is too much protein), and an entire banana at breakfast. For the rest of the day he’s supposed to have, in addition to his milk of course, meat, fat and non starchy vegetables?? You’re adding protein and fat but no carbs. That’s not balanced! Babies are not low-carbers. Again, excess protein is toxic.
By the way, you seem to have even for adults a bias against carbs. You mentioned that eating carbs at the evening meal causes bad sleep. That’s exactly the opposite of what all the sources say: Dr. Chris Masterjohn, a sleep specialist doctor I met with, Dr. Paul Jaminent… It’s commonly known that high carb in the evening promotes the best sleep.
I would appreciate your feedback greatly. Thanks in advance.
The primary carb in breastmilk is lactose…which has an enzyme (lactase) also in the breastmilk for digesting it. The carbs you are talking about require amylase that baby’s digestion doesn’t produce until they are older. After their first birthday or so is about the right timing for most. That is why grain and starch-based carbs are best delayed until baby is a bit older 🙂 Hope that makes sense.
Baby’s are most definitely not low-carbers… BUT they get their carbs (primarily lactose) from breastmilk or the homemade formula (which also contains lactose). NOT grain or starch based carbs. Note that ripe bananas (high in amylase so baby doesn’t have to produce it) is an excellent first food for baby. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/right-way-to-feed-babies/
I don’t have a bias against carbs…I just realize that many people have trouble with them, so provide options for those who are digestively compromised in that way. Some people just don’t digest carbs and starch well at all. I provide plenty of bread and carb recipes on this blog 🙂
Hi Sarah! I am a HUGE fan of your page!
What do you think about feeding raw DEER liver to baby after it sat in the freezer for maybe 6 months or so?
I’m from Alaska!
That is really up to you. If the deer population is healthy in your area, if it was me, I would use it providing the butchering facility was clean. Being in the freezer for 6 months isn’t a problem in my experience.
Hello Sarah
great video l love it!… what kind a liver do you recommend? chicken, duck, cow?
Thank you!!
They are all excellent with slightly different nutritional profiles. If you have access to various kinds from clean, local farms, I would suggest rotating them.
Hi Sarah,
Thank you for all your wonderful tips. My son started eating egg yolk at 6 months and now he absolutely loves it. He looks forward to his egg yolk everyday. I am also feeding him avocados and bananas, although the egg yolk is his fave. He’s approaching 7 months and I plan to start making broth soups for him. Do you have a step by step guide on what specific foods to introduce and when. I read your article “The right way to feed babies” but it’s not too detailed. Or is there a book you recommend that helps in great detail with this?
Thank you,
Cathy
Yes I have been doing the same thing. I read nourishing traditions and the gaps book. Still a little unsure of how long to do what and the step by step process.
Also, I have frozen beef liver in my freezer from slankers beef company. Do I need to cook it at all or just grate it as is?
Grate it raw while it’s frozen is the easiest way to do it.
The idea that raw meat frozen for 14 days becomes safe is FALSE. I even read a blog post by a woman who ate raw liver that way regularly and she got intestinal parasites, though I can’t find the site.
It’s a risk some people might be willing to take to imitate traditional cultures, but I personally would just cook it.
Why don’t you take a look at what the USDA website has to say about that?
I love that you’re sharing this information. I’m in a bit of a conundrum though. I tried giving my 4.5 month old son yolks. For almost two weeks he started to love it. Then one day he wasn’t too thrilled about the taste, and two hours later started vomiting. I skipped the next day, then gave him a very small amount two days later. He again began to vomit this time just a very small amount. Do you have any insight on this? Thanks for any tips!
I would suggest to not give him any more until he is eating other foods. He may have developed a sensitivity since that was the only food he was eating.