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.