Make Your Own Baby Food

Life is hectic and pre-prepared food can be a great stand by when time is short. Preparing your baby’s food from fresh ingredients really doesn’t take long and you have the advantage of knowing what he or she is eating.

Many health professionals recommend that breast is best for babies, but regardless of whether your baby is breast or bottle fed they shouldn’t start to eat solid food until they are six months of age. Until then your baby’s digestive system is not developed enough to handle anything other than breast milk or baby formula. It is recommended that you still continue to supplement your babies diet with breast milk or formula until they are twelve months of age.

Introducing Solid Food

At six months of age your baby is ready for iron enriched baby cereal. Over the course of a few weeks you can gradually bring new foods into the diet. Investing in a blender will allow you to make up great purees in an instant.

Steamed and pureed vegetables and pureed meats like chicken and fish can be introduced. Introduce each food separately so you can identify if your baby has an allergic reaction. By nine months you can introduce your baby to some finger foods like toast and bananas.

Your baby will like to start to feed themselves so be prepared for meal times to become messy!

Never leave your child unattended when they are eating in case they choke. By the time your baby is a toddler they will enjoy eating a range of food by themselves.

Food at the Ready

Putting aside steamed vegetables from your dinner and pureeing them takes no time at all and you can easily freeze meal sized portions for later use. Try to avoid adding sugar and salt to the food and don’t deep fry.

Toddlers like to graze so when you’re planning an outing, it is a good idea to pack a small container of food. A few sultanas, half a banana, a vegemite sandwich, a little cube of cheese and a couple of strawberries will give your child lots of variety and satisfy their hunger while you are out. For easy and healthy baby food recipes you may want to visit Kidspot.