A Real Food Lover

First of all I would highly recommend that every  parent getting ready to feed their child solid foods go to Amazon or a book store today and buy Baby’s First Foods by Nina Planck and read it cover to cover. I would also suggest the multitude of articles on the Weston A Price Foundations website. They have studied this in such depth, I can’t even begin to cover it all. At the top of their site click on the Health Topics button and scroll down to Children’s Health. You will be reading for hours Here are a few vital points:

Breast milk should be a vital part of nourishment for 6-12 months. The quality of your milk is directly affected by your diet, so eat the good food!

Starting at 4 months old begin feeding baby one egg yolk a day. Egg whites are harder to digest and can cause allergy, so start with the yolk only. Find a source of pasture-raised eggs (from hens eating a diet of insects, fish meal or flax meal). This is the ideal baby food! Add a pinch of high quality sea salt to aid digestion.

At 4 months old also begin feeding fermented Cod Liver Oil daily. 1/4 to 1/2 tsp a day.

After baby is accustomed to the taste of egg and is enjoying it, start grating a small amount of raw, organic liver into the egg. Again, a healthy grass-fed cow has a healthy grass-fed liver.

A babies digestive system contains a very small amount of the enzymes needed to digest cereal grains or carbohydrates. It is a very sad practice in America that every mother I’ve ever spoken to started their child off on wet cereal mush as a first food. Children develop grown-up level enzymes at the age of 28 months, and only small amounts of carbohydrates should be given until then. When you do feed your baby carbohydrates (even fruit) make sure it is accompanied by a healthy fat source. Mmmmm butter!

50% of the calories in breast milk are fat calories! Your baby should consume large amounts of protein, fat and homemade bone broths. The largest source of nutrition for your growing baby should be high-quality animal products in order to provide vitamins B12, A and D as well as necessary minerals like zinc.

I was lucky when my babies were young, I was right in the middle of my paleo craze and I was eating very little carbohydrates at the time. I accidentally fed my babies a fairly good diet. It wasn’t optimal by any stretch, but it could have been much more SAD. I cooked our regular dinner for the family and just pureed it in the blender. Then I would freeze small portions of the leftover purée in ice-cube trays for easy on the go breakfasts and lunches. At that time, I hadn’t found a great source of eggs or meat, so more than half of our food was from a big box grocery store. If I was doing it all over again I would search far and wide to find a farmer to purchase grass-fed and pasture-raised food from. I would make any sacrifice necessary to afford it too. Really high quality meat and dairy products are not cheap, but they are so, so valuable.

I know this subject is controversial and many people will disagree. I would urge you to do your own research on the subject and do what you think is best for your child.