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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.
Ok, I have a question. What does the term “pasteurized after cultured” mean? Wouldn’t that mean they wasted their time culturing something if it was then pasteurized??
One of my day care mom’s brought some of this for me to feed to her 10 month old. When I suggested she feed the baby some yogurt, I had NO idea she was going to buy it instead of making it herself. Check out the label for this junk (keep scrolling down to the product description).
This one says no artificial flavors but on the label of the actual yogurt container it lists “natural flavors” (and I think every flavor of yogurt has some differences in this regard). The mom brought me blueberry, but I didn’t see any blueberry listed, but it’s definitely the same product. As far as I’m concerned, natural flavors can mean just about anything and probably includes artificial flavors as well, but the FDA likely lets them get by with it because they’re a big company and because there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two, since the FDA has no “legal description” of the word natural.
Just curious about what others think of the term pasteurized after culturing. Also, no where on the label does it list any enzymes that I could see, so this is actually more like pudding than yogurt, no??
Lord, I wouldn’t feed this stuff to a dog I didn’t like.
Hi Sarah, love your website, just discovered it. My son is 5.5 mos old. He’s a very hungry boy, so I started him about 3 weeks ago on an organic brown rice cereal (before I discovered your advice not to give rice cereal). He likes it, and I had been feeding it to him 2x a day. I tried the egg yolk 5 times now. Just little tastes each time (nothing forced), but he contorts his face and gags each time. I was about to throw away the yolk again today, but decided to stir it into a bit of rice cereal and he ate it no problem. Any advice on getting him to actually like eating the yolk? Also, if rice cereal is not recommended b/c babies lack the digestive enzyme amylase, could one just add banana to the cereal (which contains amylase)?
Much thanks for your advice & very helpful video on preparing the egg yolk 🙂
-Gina
Hi Gina
Just my personal thoughts, but I would stop feeding the rice cereal (and stay off it) and try banana. Get your son used to this flavour and continue trying with the egg yolk. In the meantime buy some organic chicken livers and freeze them individually. Once it’s been frozen for 14 days start grating a little into his egg yolk – they really do seem to like it, so you might have more luck.
I really think you need to stay away from the rice cereal though. I’m sure if it was an option to consume it with the bananas Sarah would have said so.
I’m currently struggling to get my son to eat the Morrocan Stewed Lamb from Nourishing Traditions. My perserverance is paying off as he just ate a few mouthfuls himself after being offered it for the third time, yay! We’ll get there as I really want to eat it myself, tehe. They do get used to food, it can just take time.
All the best. My son eats really well and gets his daily dose of FCLO and is such a healthy ‘little’ man (he’s huge in comparison to other toddlers his age), the traditional diet really is so very worth it.
Diana x
Hi Diana,
Thank you for taking the time to write a reply 🙂 I am going to take your suggestions of trying with frozen chicken liver & banana on its own. He doesn’t like the taste of banana on its own either, but I recently read that it takes around 10 times before they get used to a new taste, so I guess I have to just hang in there & keep trying.
Much thanks & good luck with your little one. Moroccan stewed lamb sounds really good!!
Gina
I was wondering if you had any coments or thoughts about giving quinoa as a first food. I’ve been reading about quinoa flour mixed with breast milk. I’ve been eating quinoa quire a bit and love it.
I live in the UK, and they don’t really sell applesauce here (well, they do, but it comes in a tiny jar and is more like apple pie filling). I LOVE it so I usually make my own in the crockpot, but one day I was in town and really wanted some. So I thought, hey, there might be applesauce in the babyfood section! Weird, I know, but I just love the stuff. Anyway, they did have applesauce babyfood but it had sugar in it! So I tried the pear. Same thing. Curious, I started to read the labels of all the jars. NOT A SINGLE one was free from grains, sugars, or gross vegetable oils. WTF? I was legit shocked. Poor naive me!
I left and forgot about it, but on reflection, it’s kind of scary. I am a grown woman with a healthy GI system, yet I would not put that stuff with its unprepared grains, sugars and rancid oils in my body. And yet we are feeding it to our BABIES.
Thanks for this post, Sarah! This video is _very_ helpful in understanding how to make the egg yolk/liver meal. I had heard about it but was unsure how to make it based on the written directions.
Our little guy is 8+ months and he has been talking for a good two months now! Thanks to previous baby posts from you, we started feeding him nibbles of egg yolk from mommy’s plate when he showed interest at around 5-6 months. 🙂
Great video! I have a question. It seems easier to separate the yolk from the white and then poach it. Wouldn’t that work?
Liver question:
I cannot bear the sight/smell/thought of liver. When my husband has cooked in the past, I have had to leave the house until it was aired out. Serious aversion. Are the capsules of dried liver worth it? Are there any sources other than beef? Beef aversion as well.
Chicken, duck, and lamb livers are also beneficial. Also, fresh (raw) chicken liver (from pastured hens ONLY, please) doesn’t have a strong smell, like cooked beef liver does.
Hi Sarah,
Is the raw liver more easily digested than cooked liver? Thank you!
Yes it is … 🙂
Great post Sarah. I have been feeding my son who is 5 months now the egg yolk from an over easy egg since he was 4 months. Just a few days ago, I started adding his cod liver oil to the yolk and he swallows it much better now. I am going to start soft boiling his yolks from now on as he can actually eat almost a whole yolk now. I wonder about chicken liver like one of the previous readers mentioned.
Hey can you suggest some good cook books for feeding babies, Paleo? Thanks 🙂