• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 455 0

tastes in food. If babies are first introduced to solids with ice cream, cheese, and refined flour products as first foods, they’ll develop a taste for creamy, high-fat foods with low-nutrient values. If babies are introduced to soy yogurt, avocados, and whole-grain foods, their palates will gravitate to naturally creamy, hearty, nutrient-dense food choices.

Most parents start their babies’ solid food adventures with infant rice cereal. Often iron fortified, nonallergenic, and easy to mix with breast milk or formula, it’s a good first food choice. But other premade infant foods, such as jarred baby foods, can usually be considered a waste of money. According to many baby nutrition experts, expensive premade baby foods are highly processed and some contain undesirable fillers or preservatives.

Some organic, jarred vegan baby foods are now available, and buying it in a pinch or for travel, for example, may be worth the expense, but many parents choose to make their own baby foods at home. (See The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feeding Your Baby and Toddler for an excellent primer on that—just bypass the meat and poultry sections.)

And during the first few weeks or months of food introduction, after allergies are ruled out, some parents become so adept at knowing what their baby likes, they feed their older baby mashed food right from their own plate to baby’s mouth. This is ideal in many regards, as baby’s tastes and nutrition naturally mirrors her parents’ right from the start.

That’s So Vegan

The ultra-smooth, almost artificial texture of bottled baby foods can make the transition to regular foods more difficult for some babies and doesn’t help them practice grasping small foods with their own little fingers.

Beware: Choking Hazards

While you’re introducing solid foods, keep this in mind: some of the healthiest foods may, unfortunately, also be choking hazards. Avoid these vegan snack choices for babies and toddlers:

◆ Apples with peels (serve peeled, diced small)

◆ Chunks of any food, like vegan cheese and tofu cubes

◆ Globs of peanut butter or other nut butters

◆ Gum

◆ Hard, gooey, or sticky candies

◆ Nuts and seeds

◆ Popcorn and chips

◆ Raisins and other dried fruit

◆ Raw veggies (unless grated)

◆ Tofu dogs (scrambled tofu or mashed tofu is okay)

◆ Whole grapes

Almost any fruit or veggie that can be puréed or mashed is a good choice for baby’s first food. A number of manufacturers are producing great baby food, and simply using your fork or the back of your spoon to soften up and smooth out a bit of food you’re eating works, too. What’s on Mom’s plate usually looks best to baby, so be prepared to cook for two for a while even though you’re not eating for two.

Basic Nutrition for Vegan Infants

Optimal infant nutrition comes down to breast-feeding. This was once a controversial statement, but choosing not to breast-feed is no longer a preference as much as it is a risk.

According to the Journal of the American Dietetic Association,many vegan women continue to breast-feed their babies well past the 6-month minimum recommendation, and this is an excellent way to ensure nutrition throughout the entire first year, prior to solid food introduction and beyond. To ensure proper nutrition, babies being fed with infant formula should slowly wean off infant formula from 6 months through the first year.

The following sections offer some specific nutritional needs for your vegan infant.

Calories

Caloric intake for infants varies greatly as babies grow exponentially in the first days, weeks, and months. Even within individual feedings, breast milk caloric content changes drastically from the skim milk-like fore milk at first to the good-fat-laden hind milk at the end of a feeding.

At about 1 year, most babies need about 900 calories a day. As solid foods are introduced, choose natural foods rich in nutrients and calories.

Protein

Around 7 or 8 months, most babies have tried enough solid foods that they’re ready for some of the more complex, protein-rich foods like well-mashed