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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.
Sarah,
Can you fry an egg with the center runny instead of soft boilng?
Cheers!
Angel
I would soft boil it. It’s so very easy. The risk of losing enzymes if you fry the egg seems a risk to me if the yolk gets too hot. When you soft boil, the yolk doesn’t get hot .. only warm.
Are you sure you want your kids talking earlier? Once they start there’s no stopping them.
I started with bananas. Eggs are good, too. Liver? To a little tiny baby? I know it’s good, but doesn’t seem fair, somehow.
My kids loved the liver … they actually took the egg yolk much more readily with the liver than without. And, yes – children talking earlier is fantastic as they take direction much earlier as well. Makes Mom’s job easier!
Sarah once the fresh liver has been frozen for 14 days, if I thaw it out in the fridge, how long will it stay good in the fridge?
Tracey
Just a few days … try grating a bit at a time and keeping the liver in the freezer. It is best grated frozen anyway. Grated thawed liver is next to impossible.
Oh, and I didn’t even answer your question did I? Thawed liver will keep just a few days in the refrigerator.
Thank you for such an excellent video! I wish I would have known this when my own children were babies, we fed them rice cereal as a first food. Even though we fed grains to our kids, we fed them raw egg yolks early and they gobbled them up.
I watched this with my 4-year-old daughter and now she knows exactly what to feed her babies first. In fact, she wants to go make some raw egg yolks with liver now, and eat it as a snack. 🙂
Thank you again for your video!
Another great post Sarah! I will be sure to pass this along to my friend who has a 4 month old and just started feeding him the rice cereal last week.
Good information for me to pass on to young mom’s who are my clients. Thanks for this! These young mom’s always look at me like I have two heads when I mention egg yolks, liver or pureed meats and NO cereals as first foods. People are so out of touch with real nutrition because they try to secure nutrition information from pediatricians and family doctors who know virtually nothing about healthy foods. To tell the truth, they know little about most things – including health! I’m supportive of trauma medicine and certain surgeries (emergency type things) but the rest of the current medical paradigm stinks like yesterday’s diapers.
I have a hard time answering this query from some of the young mom’s: they all want to start feeding their babies food (mostly jarred foods) at about 2 months old! I didn’t start my kids on egg yolks even until they were about 7 – 8 months. They didn’t need it because they were breastfeeding and happy. When they started getting teeth, I cut down on little on breastfeeding (still pumped though) and started with “real foods”. How is the best way to try to explain to young mom’s that rice cereal (or any cereal) shouldn’t be a first food and certainly not at 2 months old? I get so frustrated trying to explain the egg yolk idea so I’ve often printed out material to send home with them, but I doubt they read it because they come later on with a box of rice cereal anyhow. Arg!
I also have one mom whose baby was a preemie and is now 4 months old and she wants me to start giving him jarred foods (the 2nd foods jars) and said he takes 2 jars at each feeding. Isn’t that a lot of food for a 4 month old? He doesn’t seem to actually NEED the food, but he does consume about 8 ounces of milk every 4-5 hours now. I think she’s overfeeding him and then wonders why I tell her he’s fussy and gassy all day. He’s not breastfed and is using Safeway’s O brand organic formula (dairy based). He has mild cerebral palsy and a very exaggerated startle response, so he’s hard to feed unless I swaddle him and that is getting so it doesn’t work well anymore. He never stops moving. Double arg!
Hopefully, this video will help bring a personal touch to the egg yolk/liver feeding recommendation. Seeing another Mom who has used it successfully with her children and yes, they didn’t turn into aliens from it (LOL) will hopefully encourage Moms to get back to traditional first foods and away from this baby cereal nonsense which has done nothing but contribute to the growth of allergies and obesity in children.
Well, my own kids are grown and gone from home so they aren’t actually “viewable”! But I do have photos of them I like to share. My youngest son and his family live in a burb only about 6 miles away, but they are rarely here during the time I am providing day care.
One thing I wanted to comment about, was that when I started feeding my babies egg yolk, my mentors (Mom and 2 Gram’s) told me to add a dollop of real butter and a titch of salt. Back then we had no “sea salt” which would have certainly made for a more excellent addition. Do you do that when you normally advise serving egg yolk? If so, I missed it in the vid. The butter seems to make it more palatable, at least my kids loved it that way. When they were older and could have the whole hard/soft boiled egg and white, they called it egg in a cup and wouldn’t touch it unless they saw me put the butter and salt in! My daughter even now, at age 36, will eat butter off’n a spoon and she is thin and healthy like crazy. She is heavily into ballet (all legs) and yoga as part-time interests for exercise and now is helping her niece (my first grandbaby!) become interested, too. My grandbabies LOVE eggs and our milkfed pork bacon and will often eat 3 eggs at breakfast. They don’t, however, tolerate liver now that they’re older. Me either 8 – !!
Hi Sarah!
I also used to add a little butter and a dash of sea salt to the yolks, hopefully this was OK?! It gave it a bit more flavor so they were more apt to go for it.
Kelly
That was probably fine .. haven’t thought about that before. Remember that babies are ok with not much flavor as they have nothing to compare it too. They have little virgin tastebuds 🙂
This is why it’s a good idea to start flavoring foods from the onset. Later food aversions and pickiness can be diverted by using spices and herbs from the time you start feeding foods. Exposure to different tastes and flavors during infant hood makes it easier to feed kids during toddlerhood and beyond!! My mother did this with me and my 2 siblings, and by the age of 5 there was nothing we wouldn’t eat, including mildly spicy curries!
My mother has told that when I was 8 months old or so, I would go nuts for her fresh carrots pureed w/ orange and ginger and mashed peas w/ mint and tarragon. 🙂 At 33, I still love those flavors!
My siblings and I are all like that, too 😀
I watched this video this morning, and promptly went downstairs and prepared this for my 9 month old. He has only been eating food for a month and is still nursing frequently. He gobbled up almost the entire egg yolk! Fortunately I am able to get my eggs from a friend who raises her 20 chickens on ten acres. I will be feeding egg yolks to him on a regular basis now! Thank you!
My baby is 9 mos and on straight table food now, but I always supplement in egg yolk, grass fed butter (KerryGold), avacado chunks, homemade liverwurst (her fav)
I wonder how you make the homemade liverwurst!
Question… why can’t you just quick scramble a egg yolk?
Because you are going to overcook the egg yolk, loosing the precious enzymes it contains.
They advise soft boiling so the egg is runny and retains enzymes. However, I also want to add that popular medical advice now says you can eat egg whites as an infant. Also, any food that was usually held off due to concerns of allergies (citrus, nuts, etc) they now say you can feed to baby and that actually feeding to baby as young as four months or when they can take it may actually help prevent allergies. The only exception is if there is a known allergy to something in a family member, you might still want to hold off on that particular food. This advice has changed between my two and a half year old, and now my six month old. So do your research, but just wanted to point out that egg white may not really need to be avoided. However, when they are first eating, I wouldn’t waste their limited stomach space on the egg white as the yolk is much more nutritious for baby.