An Indian Perspective (my interview with Sandra)

Hi Abbie!

Ever since your post on annaprasan I have been meaning to go back to my notes from an interview with my friend Sandra to see if she touched on this first-food tradition. While I didn't find any mention of it, I did enjoy reading back over her thoughtful and detailed answers and decided to go ahead and post them now before the craziness of holiday travels leaves me happily stranded in Indiana without internet access :) I haven't yet tried her recipe for kichri, as my son is too little for it at 5 months, but I'm looking forward to it. I hope you and your family have a very happy holiday season!


On traditional first foods: "In India, babies are usually nursed until about 9 months of age, sometimes longer. Solid foods are introduced at 3 months of age. One of the first solids is a cereal derived from rice which is thought to be most easily digested. This would be cooked into a thin gruel and called "conji". Nowadays the most common brands for babies cereal are "Farex" and "Cerelac" that is usually mixed with formula to form a runny porridge. Other first foods are mashed banana, and when the child is a little older, at about 6 months, vegetables cooked and in chicken or beef broth and then pureed and strained."

On more "advanced" infant foods: "The most common food for children around 1 year old is a dish called "kichri" (recipe at end of interview). This is rice and lentils cooked together until it becomes very soft. Other foods would be rice and yogurt, custard, a piece of chapati (Indian flat bread that looks like a tortilla), buttered rice, and fish (especially where I grew up along the coast). This was simply a spoonful of butter stirred into a cup of just-cooked rice with fish either poached or sauteed. Children were always given sweeter tasting river fish (with skin and bones removed) instead of the sea fish."

On taboo foods: "No crustaceans as they were considered difficult to digest. No fruit called custard apple similar to cherimoya, since it has small seeds that could pose a choking hazard. No uncooked eggs and no caffeinated drinks."

On medicinal or health-promoting foods: "Honey (given only to children older than 3 years), milk, onion juice cooked with sugar - remedy for colds, porridge made out of ragi (millet) flour was supposed to be good for overall health, other grain porridges made from oatmeal, whole wheat flour, semolina (cream of wheat) and sago (starch extracted from the pith inside stems of the sago palm Metroxylon), coconut water from tender (green) coconuts is considered cooling in hot weather."

On liquids given to babies: "Milk is the primary liquid. Cow's milk is only introduced after the child is 1 year old. Formula milk is becoming increasingly common. Rice starch (ie water collected after boiling rice) is also given. Babies are not given fruit juices to drink."

On the feeding of babies: "Usually it is the mother who feeds the baby. Previously in the joined family with extended family members present others would pitch in to feed the baby. Most middle and upper class families would have a nanny or "ayah". She was a servant of importance who worked with the family for many years performing the role of lady's maid as well. We look upon ayahs with great affection as she was like a second mother to us. Fussy eaters would be made to eat by distracting them with songs or bird/animal noises. Milk is fed in a bottle. For all other semi-solid and solid foods babies are spoon fed. It was not uncommon for the ayah to put small morsels of food in the child's mouth with her fingers. Babies were fed before their older siblings. Having spent my childhood in India and having brought up my own children here I can see the difference in expectations re:when a child ought to feed itself. In India the ayah would feed the child until 5 or 6 years of age. Whereas here children are encouraged to feed themselves as soon as they have the motor skills to do so."

"Here are some of my favorite toddler foods: Fresh fruit - especially diced mango, "Eggy soldiers" Soft boiled egg with butter toast fingers to dip into the yolk, Custard. Ready-made or bottled baby food was not favored - all food was made using fresh ingredients. Indians are quite fastidious about this."

"Here's my home recipe for kichri - interestingly this is believed to be the origin of the Anglo-Indian rice dish called "kedgeree":

- 1 cup rice
- 1/2 cup yellow lentils (moong dal)
- 2 cups water
- 1 tbsp butter
- pinch of salt
Wash the rice and lentils till the water runs clear.
Put in a large saucepan with 2 cups water and a pinch salt.
Bring to a boil on medium heat then partially cover the sauce pan and simmer till the rice and lentils are soft and the water is absorbed.
Stir in the butter
The water in the above recipe can be replaced with chicken broth."

More on Early Fruits

Hi Abbie!

Wow, the figures you posted regarding the amount of fertilizer required to cultivate bananas are staggering! I'm surprised, given that bananas are the most often consumed fruit in the world (at least according to an old trivial pursuit question). We had been avoiding them for our son for another reason (his ongoing struggle with constipation), but this definitely complicates matters further... I found the whole article you linked us to interesting and upsetting; it helped remind me that in this day and age, with so much information and choice available to us, we have an obligation to do the best we can for our planet, our children, each other... This philosophy should apply whether we're talking about the fanciest "adult" recipes or our children's "first foods."

As for alternative "first fruit" traditions, I haven't uncovered much beyond what you mentioned. Many of my friends and cousins with children also started with bananas. In the interview from my friend Sandra (see next post), bananas are mentioned as a common early fruit in India, and mangoes came up as an "all-time baby favorite." Infants and Children: Their Feeding and Growth by Frederic H. Bartlett, M.D., (NY: 1932), which I referenced in an earlier post, suggests apples and prunes as first fruits, followed by banana, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, and red raspberries ("don't worry about the seeds") - all stewed except for the very ripe bananas (p. 60-61). Pears and peaches come up over and over as "first fruits" in the books on baby nutrition I've borrowed from our local Women's Center.

I have read in several places that babies should wait until the one year mark before trying citrus fruits due to their high acidity and propensity for causing allergic reactions. Then again, your research shows that Kenyan mothers start oranges early (at 3 months), and my friend from Nicaragua named orange juice and lemonade as early and health-promoting foods. The advice tome from the 1930s recommends orange juice beginning at 2 months (hehe). So, who knows? How old was your son when he first tried citrus?

So far, the only fruits my son has tasted are prunes and pears (OK, my husband pointed out that technically most of his foods have been fruits (squash, avocado, etc.), but you know what I mean!). We'll probably start apples next. I'll keep my eyes peeled for more opinions and information on early fruit traditions!

The banana dilemma

Hi Marjorie!

Today, as I dropped my son off at his daycare, another parent mentioned that her little 5 month old had just tried bananas. It was clearly a big milestone for the family: their little girl tried a fruit after a month of just cereal. I know that bananas are likely the first fruit of choice in most American households. They are easy to mash up, require no cooking and have a sweet, bland taste. Now that I am packing toddler lunches, I admit that I often fall back on them. On my mornings of hurried lunch bag filling, it is easy to rip one off the bunch and jam it in next to the yogurt and cheese slices. And they are cheap.

I still can't figure out why bananas are as cheap as they are, and I'm sure the answer will make me uncomfortable as an aspiring conscientious consumer. They need to be shipped from tropical locales. Yet they can cost less per pound than the apples that come from right outside the city. Bananas also require a startling amount of fertilizer per cultivated acre (427 pounds versus 35 pounds for peas or beans). So why is the cost of that fertilizer not passed along to us? Even this superficial consideration of the economics points to another unsettling truth: bananas are not a good environmental choice. Imagine the carbon footprint, given the transcontinental diesel shipping! So, why do we as American families, continue to serve our children bananas, when we could serve them locally grown apples or low-fertilized green peas? I'm not sure why bananas continue to be such a staple in this country, but one reason, for sure, is that they have cornered the market as a first food.

Apples, pears and plums all have their place in the baby fruit pantheon here, I suspect largely thanks to prepackaged Gerber purees. While citrus is not common here, my research shows that Kenyan mothers do feed their 3 month olds oranges. Indonesian mothers serve porridges fortified with both banana and papaya. I know your own mother-in-law identified watermelon as a common baby fruit in Taiwan. Have you found any other fruit traditions? Bananas make more sense to me as a baby food in Indonesia or Ecuador...there, they are locally grown. This may be the last week of bananas in my own household. Good thing my kid likes apples!

Re: Rites of Passage

Hi Abbie!

You are so right to highlight the universal interest in the initial feedings of a young baby. With our little-one just out of the starting-gate with solid foods, my husband and I chose to skip the public display of eating at The Big Family Thanksgiving with forty guests, most of whom were meeting our son for the first time. Part of me felt guilty about this, like I was hoarding him for myself, but my concerns about him being overwhelmed by the crowd's enthusiasm won the day. We, I suspect like most Americans, chose to videotape our son's first bites to preserve the memory. That way, family and friends will be able to experience it without upsetting the intimacy of the moment for our nuclear family.

Like you, I do wish there were an established tradition in our culture that celebrated a baby's first non-milk meal with more than just Mom and Dad. When I spoke to my Taiwanese mother-in-law about this concept after reading your post, she said there is a tradition in Taiwan that sounds very similar to annaprasan, the ritual first feeding of an infant in the Indian tradition. A number of objects are laid out in front of a four-month-old baby, whose fate is supposedly determined by which article he grabs. She named scissors (a tailor), scales (a merchant), an abacus (a businessman), and a book/pen (an "intellectual"). I had a hard time with "scissors", but it was the first thing she named - and very enthusiastically. No other professions surfaced despite less-than-unbiased-professional prompting.

Another ritual that my mother-in-law had already observed for her own sons and my own was at their one-month birthday. She made yu-bung (oily rice with cabbage, mushroom, pork, scallions, etc.) and ang-nung (red hard-boiled eggs "like at easter") for the family and neighborhood - I think in celebration of a viable new life that was "out of the woods" so to speak, common in many cultures.

Finally, she mentioned tying a cord covered in bread, strung through a central hole ("like bagels") around a four-month-old baby's neck to ward off future problems with drooling. Afterward, the adults eat the delicious bread, drool and all. I have a hunch there are more interesting rituals to be discovered at a later time...

Back to your post - my guess is that you are correct in supposing that annaprasan is more of a ceremonial first than an actual one. This appeals to me in that it preserves the actual first-feeding for parents, but invites shared participation from the larger community in celebration of a baby's induction into the exciting, new world of eating. I am hoping we will stage just such an event when our families are next together later this season!

Love,
Marjorie

Rites of passage

Hi Marjorie!

You have asked what first foods I gave to my own baby, and when I introduced oils and spices. Memories fade so quickly -- I had to go back and look at his baby journal (if you can even call it that!). I wish I had had the time and scrap-booking talent to produce a detailed archive of his infancy, but it is just a plain notebook with absentmindedly jotted down entries every month or so. It seems like he ate mostly avocado, spinach and sweet potatoes from age 6 to 8 months. Then I slowly introduced chopped up foods that we were eating, with the chili heat level dialed down. During his big teething time around 8 to 9 months, I gave him a chicken leg bone (with the sharp pin bone removed) that had some meat on it, and let him chomp away. You have to be careful, though, because sometimes he gnawed so hard he got the cartilage off. All of this is not to say that solid foods were a big part of his life. Up to about 9 months old, only ate them once or twice a day, and largely subsisted on nursing. It seems like your little one might switch over to a larger proportion of solids much more quickly -- he ate a quarter cup on his first go, after all!

I loved hearing about the first taste of food! It made me so sad that I can't be there to see your adorable little guy guzzling down some Delicata squash or prunes. The feeding of babies is something that EVERYONE wants to participate in -- having just passed Thanksgiving, I remembered back to my son's first holiday. He wasn't eating solids, but several people wanted to give him a taste of pumpkin pie or whipped cream. Even the more laid-back folks really wanted to watch, if not offer tastes. As a mom, it stressed me out to say no and I remember wishing that I could just feed my kid the way I wanted to feed him, privately. Now, as an honorary aunt to your son, I am really burning to watch you feed him a little taste of something and watch his reaction. I love him and you, and it is so interesting to observe first experiences! Now I have more sympathy for my Thanksgiving family.

This dilemma of public/private feeding can be hard to negotiate. My husband and I felt really strongly that we wanted some experiences to be ours and ours alone with our son (the birth, the first feeding, certain celebrations). Sometimes, I felt selfish excluding people in our lives, especially grandparents, but I also wasn't comfortable with an expectation that loving family members somehow get an all-access pass to every experience. I wanted to treasure these fleeting moments, not feel pressure as a hostess or walk the minefield of well-intentioned but sometimes unwelcome advice. How to balance all of this? I do want to honor the community that is helping to raise my child, and include them in the celebration of his growth.

Two ideas for a public celebration have emerged in my research, one from Sudan and one from India. My Sudanese colleague described how, on the occasion of the emergence of a first tooth, an infant's family brings a large dish of a special rice pudding to the local temple. Usually the mother or grandmother prepares the dish. So when a family at the mosque is eating or sharing rice pudding, the members of the community always ask who has cut their first teeth. There is no exact recipe, but it is usually rice simmered with milk, sugar, and raisins. Nuts and coconut are optional based on the family's taste. This seems like a sweet and easy way to involve the larger community in an important event in a baby's life.

Another idea is the Bengali tradition of annaprasan, the ritual first feeding of rice. Usually this occurs when a child is 6 months old, while sitting on a grandparents lap. I need to investigate further whether this is truly a first feeding of solids, or just a ritual "first feeding". I suspect the latter. This rite of passage has been on my research radar screen for a while -- and then just this past week, Jhumpa Lahiri wrote a small piece on the topic in the New Yorker (here's the link to the piece) There are myriad instructions out there on the web as to how the ritual is performed, and what recipe to use for the rice. One of my favorite discussion threads (here's the link), states that part of the tradition is to offer the child different objects, representing future endeavors (i.e. if he touches the pen, he will be a poet). This ritual is the part of a larger cultural and religious practice, and certainly I am not proposing that we all adopt this tradition wholesale. But the idea behind it is charming, and gives an organized way for the larger community to observe a baby's milestone. I know I would have loved to participate in your son's annaprasan, or some version thereof.

Love, Abbie

Our First Solid Food Experience

Hi Abbie!

I really enjoyed reading about the rich, early flavor experiences you described in your last post. It gives me hope for so many of us young parents who were ourselves brought up during the jarred baby food craze and who are now on a hunt to rediscover another way - from another time or another place - something more real. Thank you for sharing some of your little one's early favorites; I can't wait to try them out when my guy is a bit farther along!

For weeks, we've been watching our four-month-old eye our meals greedily while bringing whatever he had in his hand to his mouth for a "taste." At last, it was time, and we presented him with his very own helping of steamed, pureed delicata squash. It took him one messy attempt to get the hang of opening his mouth wide for the spoon, and we had to cut him off after he'd downed a quarter of a cup, because I wasn't sure how his insides would take to so much of a new substance. A rousing success! We waited a couple of days before introducing our next choice, avocado, the cost of which is normally prohibitive in our neck of the woods, but which were miraculously three for two dollars this week at our co-op. Alas, its sophisticated subtlety was lost on him, and I was forced to eat most of it.

Peas and prunes followed in close succession. (Because my son drinks soy formula, he tends to get constipated. My midwife suggested we stick to the letter "P," like peas, pears, prunes. I am wondering about oatmeal? Do you have any other suggestions? I know he'll love bananas, but I'm scared about their constipating tendency...). We steamed and pureed the peas much like the squash, with a little extra water. For the prunes - we roughly chopped organic, unsulfurated prunes, added a little water and cooked them in a sauce pan for a few minutes, until their skins had softened. In order to avoid making a very sticky, thick paste, the prunes required substantially more water than the other foods we had prepared. Our son enjoyed the peas and warmed up to the prunes after some initial sour/perplexed expressions. We froze the surplus (except for the avocado) in ice cube trays overnight and popped them out the next morning into a freezer bag.

My husband, son, and I have had lots of fun with this first solid food experience. Even though we still have many new "plain" flavors to try, I am already wondering things like, "when are spices OK?" and "How much solid in addition to his soy milk is reasonable - like how many times a day, etc.?" For now, we plan to stick with single foods for a few more staples, like carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples,green beans, etc., but I know that very soon I will want our son to try squash prepared our grown-up way with ginger, a little sugar, and a little oil. Having started solids at four months and three days, he is on the young end of the currently-preached-in-the-USA spectrum, so I do have concerns about the readiness of his digestive system for all of this...I am wondering how long I should wait before introducing him to something more involved, like your saag panir recipe from the last post.

Another concern I have about making my own baby food stems from a section of the pamphlet I referenced last time from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Starting Solid Foods (revised 2008). They warn, "Do not feed your baby home-prepared beets, turnips, carrots, spinach, or collard greens in the first year of life. In some parts of the country, these vegetables have large amounts of nitrates, chemicals that can cause an unusual type of anemia in young babies. Baby food companies are aware of this problem and screen the produce they buy for nitrates. They also avoid buying these vegetables in parts of the country where nitrates have been found. Thus it is safer to use commercially prepared forms of these foods during the first year of life." As I looked into this issue more thoroughly, it seems that the problem has little to do with commercial vs. homemade baby food, but more to do with the maturity of a baby's digestive system and its ability to destroy certain bacteria that change nitrates into nitrites, which impair hemoglobin's ability to carry oxygen. An article I found very helpful in clarifying the phenomenon can be found at http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/nitratearticle.htm. The consensus from this and other sources seems to be that if a baby is over three months old, their digestive system is advanced enough to handle the naturally occurring nitrates which are found in a number of foods. Interesting issue that could be confusing for the home-baby food chef.

I would love to hear about some of your very early, just-started-solids experiences, like when you introduced oils, salts, spices, etc. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

Marjorie

Picky eating? Nah!

Hi Marjorie!

Your post really summed up the challenges we have been discussing. In stark contrast, I spent yesterday afternoon with a young father from Yemen who has a 6 month old. With Grandma's guidance, the baby had been eating pureed vegetable soup for the past few months (Amazing, isn't it, how vegetable-based soups seem to be emerging in our research as an an almost universal first food?). This Friday is an important Muslim holiday, and Grandma is baking a whole lamb, stuffed with rice, herbs and ground meat. He was looking forward to the baby tasting the meat. When I mentioned your discovery of the concern over the "strong flavor" of meat, he snickered. He said any baby in his family better get used to strong flavor -- that's what their food is all about. "No picky eaters!" He declared. "That's very American!"

With my own son, 8 to 12 months was a magic window, when he greedily ate any thing "strongly flavored" that came his way. I thought maybe that was just a quirk, but then this past Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a food column by Pete Wells (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15food-t-000.html?_r=1&ref=dining). He discussed his young son Dexter and how amazed his family was to see how open Dexter was to new flavors when he was an infant of 7 to 8 months. Then, writes Wells, Dexter began turning against previously well-loved foods:

"He discovered things not to like in experiences that previously brought him only pleasure. A lot of parents call this picky eating. I think it was just the birth of that consciousness that, for the rest of his life, will shadow his joys with the knowledge that nothing is as ever good as it could be".

I was really moved by this idea, as well as by Well's suggestion that the movie "Ratatouille" taught his then-toddler how to appreciate new flavors and new taste combinations once again. We will get it from Netflix soon!

Here are two favorite recipes from the period of my son's early openness to new flavors. This is not to say he then rejected all of his favorite early foods. Green peas stirred into a meaty bolognese sauce, a staple of that period, remains his favorite meal. The sauce is loaded with garlic, herbs, tomatoes, and Italian sausage. Now we add pasta for him, but initially it was just peas and sauce (incidentally, one of his first word combinations as well). Note that one of the following recipes has nuts: take it or leave it. I fed it to him by mistake, and he didn't have any reaction. He loved it so much, I kept feeding it to him. I know, I know. Call the allergy police. I'm sure horror stories abound, and thankfully it didn't happen to me. Every mom can make her own decision on this one.

Farro and Porcini Risotto: http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.aced15a43a1d10e593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=a2e76f3988f09110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=0dd9349d52e38110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=print&currentslide=1&page=1

Saag Panir (adapted from Suneeta Vaswani's Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

2 Tbsp oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 Tbsp minced or grated ginger
pinch of red chili flakes (optional -- best to leave it out the first time)
2 Tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric
2 10-oz packages frozen spinach, thawed
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup nonfat milk or soy milk
2 cups plain yogurt
2 tsp cornstarch
1 package of panir (bland Indian cheese -- if you can't find it, use firm tofu, cut into cubes

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions, ginger and chili flakes, if using, and saute over medium heat until soft and pale golden.

2. Stir in coriander and turmeric and saute, stirring well, 2-3 minutes.

3. Add spinach and salt. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. In a blender, puree spinach with milk and return mixture to pot; alternatively, add milk to pot and puree with a blender stick.

4. Place pot over low heat. Stir yogurt and cornstarch together than add to spinach mixture. Add panir and mix gently. Covered and simmer until heated through, about 10 minutes.

A Disappointing Meeting

Hi Abbie!

Trust your instincts as a mother (and as a cook) - that is good advice. Last week, I went to a talk with the promising title "Starting First Foods and the Family Table" at our local Women's Center. The audience was filled with first-time moms eager for guidance and hanging on every word of the clearly unprepared nutritionist leading the discussion. It broke my heart to see moms asking questions like, "Will I being doing harm to my six-month-old baby by offering him a sip of water from my glass if he is curious about it?" or "We've been giving my son cereal exclusively for a month and a half, but he hates it so much he cries when he sees the bowl. Is it OK to try something different even though he isn't seven months yet?"

Despite my lack of expertise, I wanted to hijack the meeting and turn it into a pep-talk for embracing our inner mothering instincts. I wanted to remind everyone that our great-great-great-great-great grandmothers somehow made this motherhood thing work without much of the "expert" advice we have at our fingertips today and that we can do it too. My husband calls this my "in the wild" argument and correctly points out that infant mortality rates were much higher in the past. (I concede - modern technology often signifies forward progress. My own sweet son wouldn't have made it without much medical intervention at birth and for his first couple of months). But still! There is a time and place for strict rules and guidelines, and cooking and eating ain't it!

Everyone at the meeting received some literature with suggested times to introduce certain foods. One pamphlet, "Starting Solid Foods," put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics (revised in 2008), seemed refreshingly permissive compared to most other sources I have read, including the other handouts we received at the talk and the nutritionist's own advice. The pamphlet gave a generous age range for starting solids ("generally between 4 and 6 months"), and emphasized taking cues from your individual baby. As for types of foods offered:

"for most babies it does not matter what the first solid foods are. By tradition, single-grain cereals are usually introduced first. However, there is no medical evidence that introducing solid foods in any particular order has an advantage for your baby. Though many pediatricians will recommend starting vegetables before fruits, there is no evidence that your baby will develop a dislike for vegetables if fruit is given first...Many pediatricians recommend against giving eggs and fish in the first year of life because of allergic reactions, but there is no evidence that introducing these nutrient-dense foods after four to six months of age determines whether your baby will be allergic to them...Within a few months of starting solid foods, your baby's daily diet should include a variety of foods each day that may include the following:"
- breast milk and/or formula
- meats
- cereal
- vegetables
- fruits
- eggs and fish

This list covers a lot of food! In contrast, a different handout from the same meeting banned eggs and fish until after three years of age and advised against serving anything other than cereal until your baby is eating a half a cup of cereal at a time. (!?). The nutritionist cautioned against introducing meats for the first few months of eating solids due to their "strong flavor." I plan on adopting the "try it and see" approach myself...

We also received some recipes at the meeting. I have mixed feelings about them. The majority involve pureeing two or three foods together in strange ("cute?") combinations unlikely to be encountered in "adult" recipes (like "Blue Mash" - a blend of blue potatoes and purple cauliflower and "Banana-cado Puree" - you guessed it, banana and avocado). On the other hand, I think it is wonderful to encourage parents to experiment with cooking for their babies instead of just combing the baby aisle at Stop and Shop. If having these recipes in hand gives them the confidence to do that, great.

I am looking forward to some of your favorite recipes!
Marjorie

Intuition versus science?

Hi Margie!



The excerpts from the book make me laugh out loud. Your post made me think about our own future granddaughters....will they read our reference books, like What to Expect or Dr. Sears, and laugh at our generational "wisdom"? I completely agree with your concerns about moms being treated as "non-experts", forced to ignore --or perhaps never cultivate -- their own maternal instincts. There is a commercial undercurrent to a lot of this: if we are made to be afraid of our lack of knowledge, then we will buy the book, or put aside the homemade food in favor of "safe" prepared foods. Much of this fear-mongering is done in the name of public health and "science" and it is hard to sift out fact from fiction. I don't want my child to get botulism from honey, but nor do I want to avoid raw vegetables until he is four just because some expert says they could choke him.

The sad fact of our ongoing investigation into maternal food wisdom and child feeding practices is that much of it has already been lost. How many mothers have we spoken to from other countries, other local cultures, even other generations, and all they can remember is Gerber and rice cereal? Is this authentic food wisdom, or just effective marketing? What happened before baby food was a commodity? It has been such a challenge for both of us to find mothers who remember a different way. What heartens me are the many current mothers who are curious about this project, or ask these questions themselves. And this curiosity is not a new phenomenon: I have my mother's crunchy "back-to-the-land" 1970's books that talk about whole foods and purees for babies. Still, they are printed books with "recipes", not a tradition of maternal practice handed from one generation to the next.

Instinct and intuition are traditionally framed as a "female" way of knowing, versus "male" scientific authority. So many of the women in our socioeconomic class have "succeeded" by adapting to these traditionally male values. Does this become a liability when we move into the maternal role? I talk to many women who are assertive in the classroom and confident in their careers, but are cowed into asking the doctor "permission" to give their child a taste of table food. Is it because we think the doctor knows better? Is it because we are afraid to fail? Have we really been convinced we are a potential danger to our child at every stage of development? I think there are complex issues at play, but much has to do with the privileging of the scientific over the instinctual in our culture.

I mentioned Dr. Sears and his oeuvre at the beginning of this post, and while I am already rolling my eyes at some of his earnest methods, I doubt our granddaughters will be snickering at the heart of his message: watch your baby. If you are aware and attached to your child, you will know what is best for them and your family. Trust yourself as a parent. To this, I would add, trust yourself as a cook.

Abbie

p.s. I love our philosophical discussions -- but I'm hungry for some RECIPES! Next post, I'm going to give some of our current favorites!

Advice from the 1930s

Hi Abbie!

Thanks for the great post! Many of the things you brought up, especially the idea of sharing a family meal, really resonated with me. It's hard to sort through all of the disparate information out there about first foods, and I feel like it sets up new parents for at least a confusing (if not downright stressful) start to what should be an exciting journey of taste exploration. It seems like our society, with good intentions, has conditioned us to tiptoe around many aspects of child-bearing and rearing, with food introduction being no exception. We're made to feel that as "non experts," we need to rely on "expert" advice and push our own instincts aside.

A book on child-rearing from an old family collection, Infants and Children: Their Feeding and Growth by Frederic H. Bartlett, M.D., (NY: 1932), brought this concept into sharp focus for me earlier this week. The whole thing is a treasure and a hoot, with passages like, "I think everyone will agree that babies and children should never be kissed on the mouth." (p.209), and "The training for a regular bowel movement may begin at a very early age, often in the second or third month...If you can, start training your infant to have a bowel movement in the chamber each morning, at the age of 1 month...It is unnecessary to say that if you can establish this habit during infancy and childhood so that it can be carried on by the child when he gets older, it will be one of the greatest boons of his life." (p. 231 & 234). !! Like they won't learn to poop otherwise?!

But, I digress... I meant to share the advice about early foods offered by this book, just for some interesting comparisons with other information we can scrounge up. One thing that made a big impression was the overwhelming amount of advice about precisely how and when to feed a baby at every age. Schedules, including the omission of nightly feedings (I should say "the 2AM feeding") starting at 2 weeks (!), and detailed cooking instructions are outlined to an extent that I haven't seen in current advice tomes. (Maybe we have actually simplified as a society since then!) In the interest of space, I will keep to the basics for this post.

From the chapter titled "Food in Addition to Breast or Bottle":

"At 2 weeks of age, you will begin to give you baby cod liver oil.
At 1 month, orange juice.
At 3 months, cereal.
At 4 months, egg yolk.
At 5 months, vegetables.
At 6 months, stewed fruit.
As a matter of fact, you could give any of these foods at 1 month of age, if small enough quantities were used to start with, but that is more stunt feeding than it is advisable feeding." (p. 47).

The cereals recommended are oatmeal and cornmeal. The egg preparation is to boil for 15 minutes and remove the white. The vegetables listed are spinach, cauliflower, tomatoes, carrots, turnips (yellow or white), broccoli, green peas, asparagus, string beans, squash (yellow or white), celery, onions, lettuce, cabbage, and beet tops. Prep for the veggies is to cook, put through a course strainer, and season with a little butter. Canned vegetables are fine, but "don't pour away the juice that comes with them in the can. Serve some of it with the vegetable as it contains nutritious salts." (p. 60). "Perhaps the safest fruits to start with are apples and prunes. These should be cooked as they would be for grown-ups, except that spices should not be used, and only as little sugar as possible." (p. 60).

I could go on and on, but my baby of 2009 needs his bath...

Enjoy!
Marjorie

My "first foods" experience

Hi Marjorie -



I loved your post! You brought up several recommendations that I struggled with as a new mother. The one that I have always found laughable was the sincere recommendation from multiple parenting books and care providers to start kids on vegetables and not fruit, otherwise they will have a sweet tooth. Have any of these people actually tasted breast milk? It is very sweet, like melted ice cream. If the sweetness level of your first taste experience had anything to do with future candy-cravings or vegetable-hate, all breastfed babies would be total sugar-monsters. And some formulas are fairly sweet, too, but I haven't tasted many.



The other one that I never quite understood was the spice level. In my reading I have seen some dire predictions about gastric reflux, but it seems to be mostly adults projecting their own medical myths onto babies. It is not backed up with hard research as far as I can tell. Most "international" mothers that I have talked to have introduced their children to spiced foods early, although there is a general taboo about heavily chili-ed food. The peppery heat is usually dialed down. When my son was eight months old, we went out for Indian food, and he ate a large amount (for him) of saag paneer, a mild but well spiced spinach puree with yogurt, onions and cheese. The waiters looked on with approval, while patrons in the restaurant were clearly horrified (like somehow I was abusing him!). When I spoke to my Indian and Pakistani friends about it, they just shrugged. Apparently, their kids all loved some version of that dish when they were little, and the paneer cheese is a very common early food.



As for your discussion of allergies, I wondered about the wisdom of spacing the introduction of foods to every 3 to 5 days. The idea, as espoused by the parenting magazines and books, is that if you introduce slowly you will be able to pinpoint the culprit if a food allergy occurs. I remember sitting there with my 7 month old son, looking at my nutritious dinner of a vegetable soup (kind of like your husband with the Taiwanese fish soup) and realizing that it had about 12 ingredients and it would take him 2 months to "have permission" to eat it if I followed that recommendation. In my discussions with women who have raised their children in other areas of the world, this taboo never came up. I think it is a uniquely American approach, too, in that it assumes illness...that somehow an allergy is inevitable. I have also encountered many parents here in Chicago who don't understand that the spaced introduction is for detection of allergies, and rather think that rapid introduction or introducing mixed foods will lead to allergies. The whole "sweet tooth" recommendation also reflects a disordered approach to diet that is peculiarly American. Why would so many parenting experts believe that somehow you will inadvertently "program" your kids to hate vegetables? The issue here is that most kids have minimal access to high quality produce, or if they do, cheaper and more appealing highly processed foods (think chicken nuggets) are offered alongside it.



I think squash is a great idea. Squash as a first food in the late fall in New England resonates with all of my research and first-person interviews with mothers about first foods, especially those from poorer regions of the globe. Eat what is fresh, local and seasonal. Feed that to your children because that is what is available and safe and cheap. In Belgium, for example, the first food is usually leeks: cheap, fresh and available. With my own son, we started with avocados and squash. It was the middle of winter, and I know avocados aren't local, but we live in an almost exclusively Mexican neighborhood. In the winter avocados are in season in Mexico (especially Michoacan, according to my neighbors) and they are four for a dollar at our local market. I didn't start him on cereal for a variety of reasons. Mostly I felt that fruits and vegetables tasted better than a rice slurry. In my experience, the first couple months of solids is mostly about the taste anyway, very little seems to actually go down the hatch, and milk is what sustains them.



We started my son on solids at 6 months. To people who challenged me about delaying introduction of solids, I would cite the food allergy concerns. It seemed to end the subject effectively. Mainly, though, it was because I was breastfeeding exclusively and working full-time. I was worried about sustaining my lactation for as long as possible, especially given the challenges of my schedule. I worried that introducing solids early would disrupt our breastfeeding relationship. Also, he was thriving on on breast milk and it was so easy just to lift up my shirt to feed him. I wanted to prolong that ease....solids add new drama and time to the family meal.

Hmm...that reminds me...family meal. For me, this became the most important concept. It felt awkward to be feeding my child a separate meal from what we were eating because 1) I was busy and didn't like dealing with another prepared dish, 2) our food looked better than his mash and 3) we weren't sharing the same taste experience. After a few months, I would survey what I was cooking, set some aside before I added chilies or peanuts (the one high-allergen-risk I conceded), and then cut it up into non-chokeable size. That seemed to be the most satisfying experience for all of us. Sometimes he would have a little dish of yogurt or cottage cheese on the side. I ending up just modifying all of our diet somewhat towards baby friendly tastes (i.e. squash ravioli instead of chili-fried shrimp), but it was all food that we enjoyed. This is not to say he ate, or eats currently, every component of the meal I give him. But he gets a chance to try it, no one makes a big deal about "cleaning the plate", and in the end he is growing well and generally open to a variety of tastes.

Starting Solid Food

Hi Abbie!

In between finger-puppet shows and dramatic board book readings, I've been stealing as much time as I can spare researching first-foods for my little guy. He's only three and a half months now, so I still have a little time, but my husband, a fellow food-lover, is itching to get him started on the early side of the usual recommendations (4-6 months). I've found information ranging from the standard U.S. nutritionist's spiel of rice cereal to the local Women's Center's advice that "there is no evidence of any benefit to starting with cereals; you can pick from a variety of fruits or vegetables." My child's nurse recommended we follow cereal with vegetables because the sweetness of fruit might ruin any hope of creating a future vegetable-lover. I've discovered that Canada and the UK both consider meat a good early choice after cereal (to my husbands delight), while the U.S. actively discourages its introduction until later. Also, it seems that even though information on first-foods from around the world can be scarce, many cultures seem to incorporate solid foods earlier than we do here. What is one to do?

I know one resounding concern about introducing solids too early is that it could interfere with the established breast-feeding routine. In our case, unfortunately, my baby is bottle-fed a soy formula, so we have no concerns in that regard. Another major issue seems to be the increased likelihood of allergies with an earlier introduction of foods. I am having a hard time sorting out if this is true for all foods or just foods likely to cause a problem anyway (like shellfish, eggs, peanuts, etc.). Even this philosophy seems fraught with controversy with some studies contending that withholding the potential allergens in early life makes one more susceptible to adverse reactions later.

From what I have found, introducing first-foods one at a time is the favored approach (i.e. no curry until the baby has individually tasted every single component separately and exclusively for five to seven days at a time with no reaction). I can see how this would work out initially, like now we'll start carrots, carrots, carrots, carrots, carrots, but I am already sick of typing "carrots," let alone feeding it to my little new food explorer...bah. I think of my husband, born in Taiwan and most likely fed some sort of fish soup with a dozen ingredients at what we, in the U.S., would consider an insanely early age (*trust me*), and I resent having to feel like I would be a big rule-breaker if I choose to do things at a faster pace with more variety than the established "recommended guidelines" allow. In the paper "Infant Feeding: Can We Spice It Up a Bit," (Blumber, S., Journal of the American Dietetic Association , Volume 106 , Issue 4 , pp 504 - 505), Margaret Begany, a neonatal dietitian at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia says, "I believe it is fairly common in other cultures to introduce a wide variety of foods, including spicy foods, much earlier than we do in the United States." The same paper quotes Melinda Johnson, a spokesperson for the ADA, as saying "infants of parents from countries such as India, China, South America, and the Caribbean have been exposed to more spices than many of their American counterparts." I guess this is a topic for us to revisit a little later, but I already anticipate some concerns...

Jimmy and I are leaning towards waiting until the four-month mark and starting with squash, since it's local, seasonal, affordable, and delicious. I would love to hear how you started with your child and the thought process behind it.

Thanks!
-Marjorie

Coke Syrup

Hi Abbie!

Sorry to hear your little one was having tummy issues! My mom (English/Irish background) also gave us flat ginger ale and something called "coke syrup," which you could buy at the pharmacy when we were little. A quick search reveals that it is still available at some pharmacies and online. It appears to simply be concentrated coca cola, which itself had medicinal origins. My mom would pour a small amount of coke syrup over ice and have us sip it slowly when we had the flu or an upset tummy. I remember it tasting very sweet and delicious.

I have never tried hibiscus tea, but it's bright red color sounds beautiful. It makes sense that the introduction of new foods when a child is sick and less open to change would be a challenge...If the food remedies are things you wouldn't normally feed your child unless they are sick, you have a dilemma. I wonder if it's worth introducing the "sick foods" during well periods, so they get used to them? On the other hand, I remember really looking forward to my coke syrup, ginger ale, saltines, noodle soup, and popsicles when I was sick. It became part of the ritual for us as kids and signaled that we were getting special attention and treatment. I would hesitate to over-do the sick foods in well times, because I wouldn't want the foods to lose that part of their power.

-Marjorie

P.S. I checked with my mother-in-law about her suggestion of using honey-water for dry skin in babies, and yes, she did mean bee honey. This was a generation ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if women of our generation no longer do this in light of new medical guidelines.

Tummy soothing foods

Hi Marjorie!

The information about Taiwanese first foods was great. The honey water thing would definitely be taboo here -- according to the medical literature, infants 12 months and under need to avoid honey because of the risk of botulism. Do you think she was referring to bee honey?

We had a rough few days here ... a toddler with an upset tummy in the middle of potty training is not an easy situation. I was interested that your mother-in-law recommended ginger drinks for tummy soothing. My mother (eastern European background) would make us drink flat gingerale or flat coca-cola.

The food writer Elisabeth Luard reports that garlic and and garlic broth is a traditional tummy soother in Provence. My Mexican friends use rice water, and my Sudanese colleague recommends hibiscus water as a general panacea for toddler ills. All these home remedies have in common that they are liquids, and my guess is that a key benefit in using all of them is maintaining hydration.

The issue I face with the sodas, broths and teas is that when a child is sick and cranky, he's not ready to try new foods or flavors. Introducing a new soup or a brightly flavored tea is probably not going to fly. We defaulted to rice, crackers and diluted apple juice. I went to the Mexican store around the block and bought some hibiscus flowers to make tea....have you ever made it? It is a beautiful red color, with a very delicate flavor. He took a few sips, and in the end just wanted a sippy cup of water.

He is back to himself now. I will be interested to compile more suggestions for traditional tummy soothers from across the globe.

Abbie

Taiwanese First Food Traditions

Hi Abbie!
I quizzed my mother-in-law about Taiwanese first-food traditions. Thirty odd years have passed since she had young babies, so some of the suggested ages for things are her best estimates, but you get the gist. Here's what I found out:

Babies typically start around 6-7 months on rice soup (muay. Basically, rice in a water broth cooked to the point of being mushy) and the broth of pork, beef, or fish soups with the fat skimmed off. Also, maybe a little plain boiled fish (with bones carefully removed), tofu, shredded meat, and poached egg.

At 13-14 months, you can introduce a little more grease and a little salt. Small amounts of most table-food is OK (not too spicy, but some spice is fine), and also chicken soup, carrots, celery, spinach, daikon cake (shred daikon, boil in water until translucent, add rice flour, small pieces of meat, onion, and white pepper, mash into a flat cake and steam), and thin-noodle soup with eggs (mi-swa. Sort of a cross between egg-drop soup and chicken noodle soup.).

Taboo food before 12 months is too much grease, taro (causes gas), and sticky rice (causes upset stomach - probably heart burn, because that is what happens to me!).

Health-promoting foods are fish ("makes you smarter") and fish oil (imported from Japan and spoon fed, not in capsule form). Starting at 17-18 months, ginger tea or ginger ale is used for upset stomachs/diarrhea, and freshly squeezed fruit juice (orange and grape) for a healthy immune system. Babies are sometimes given honey-water to help with dry skin ("so they're head will smell better" ?) and to help get rid of jaundice. (I find this very interesting, because aren't we taught not to give infants honey for the first year?).

As for liquids, infants are often given fortified powdered milk in addition to breast milk, and then soy milk (not cows milk).

Mothers are typically the ones who feed babies. As soon as babies show interest in feeding themselves, they start to do it.

All-time baby favorites: Watermelon and fish.

I'll try to get some more ideas from her sisters and sister-in-laws as I see them.

The dilemma about baby food

We are friends from college who started families around the same time. Both of us hoped to feed our kids whole foods with real flavors. As committed and adventurous home cooks, neither one of us planned on feeding our kids from a Gerber jar. As we started looking into home-cooked baby food traditions, we realized there was little information out there for moms ready to move beyond rice cereal and fruit purees. "Gourmet" baby food recipes were dumbed down versions of adult food, usually with less flavor. There were recipes that tried to hide vegetables in "kid-friendly" flavors like chocolate. There were recipes that made you fashion a medieval castle in order to convince your child to bite into it. Wasn't there anything out there for moms who already make homemade bread, cheese and preserves? Wasn't there anything for familes who don't eat "American" food every night? Wasn't there anything better than "recipes" for fruit salad? What do moms across the globe do? What are baby food folkways, both near and afar?

In pursuit of this information, we hit up university libraries, anthropology collections, and the medical literature. Information was scarce. We don't understand this culinary black-hole. A few theories:

1) across time, most cultures just fed kids what was fresh and available to everyone
2) female cultural practice, including the care and feeding of children, is not an area of interest in the academic patriarchy
3) information like this is likely part of an oral tradition, and indeed, the idea of a written recipe for adult food is fairly new
4) introduction of industrial baby food created a gaping abyss worldwide between generations of mothers
5) "making your own baby food" has been demonized as of questionable nutritional benefit and "too much work" for the busy modern mom

We searched high and low, and given the little information out there about traditional practice, defaulted into whole mashed food and raw food, planning to slowly introduced adult food and flavors. We believe there are moms out there who are interested in this information. Not for being "green" or trendy foodies, but because we are searching for a return to tradition and lost folkways after several generations of industrial brainwashing.

On this blog we are going to explore and post information on global baby food traditions. Using published literature and personal interviews, we will ask:

What are traditional first foods (the first things babies are fed)? At what age are they traditionally started on solids?
What are more "advanced" foods for infants and toddlers?
What foods are taboo and why?
What foods are considered health-promoting or medicinal?
What liquids are the babies given?
How and who feeds the baby? When is the baby expected to feed themselves?
What foods are "all-time baby favorites"?

We will also post on the care and feeding of our own children, currently 2 years old and 3 months. We are hoping to speak to moms who know their way around the kitchen, who believe in fresh, local food, who like to explore the world throught their cooking, and who want to create wholesome food traditions for their families.