Crunchy Stuff Part Two: Baby-Led Weaning!
Thursday, June 28, 2012
For the next segment of my Crunchy series, I asked my good friend and go-to mommy for all things healthy, eco-friendly & green, Allison, writer of the blog Funny Shade of Green (definitely one of my favorite blogs to read. Go follow it. Seriously, you will thank me!) to share her love of Baby-Led Weaning.
Allison is mommy to Goose, who is one month to the day younger than little Miss LL. I asked Allison to write all about her experience with BLW because Goose is an absolute pro at it (See here!) A HUGE thank you to Allison (& Goose!) for taking time to share about this healthy way of introducing food to little ones!
Allison is mommy to Goose, who is one month to the day younger than little Miss LL. I asked Allison to write all about her experience with BLW because Goose is an absolute pro at it (See here!) A HUGE thank you to Allison (& Goose!) for taking time to share about this healthy way of introducing food to little ones!
BABY-LED WEANING
WHAT IS IT?
Baby-Led Weaning (BLW) is a book that outlines a method of introducing a wide variety of whole, unprocessed foods to your child as early as six months old and letting her be in control of how and when to eat it. As the title implies, the BABY LEADS. This means that a six month old baby can begin picking up and gumming on pieces of food, cut into safe sizes. Instead of force-spooning purees into her mouth, she can hold a piece of food in her own hand and bring it to her own mouth at her own pace. The book argues that this method of weaning expands baby’s palette, creates a sense of bonding with the parents, builds confidence in eating and reduces the likelihood of choking.
Is this a revolutionary concept? Certainly not. Parents have been sharing food with their babies throughout history. In some cultures, the mother pre-chews foods before placing chunks into her baby’s mouth (check out the Alicia Silverstone video on Youtube for more on that method). It has only been in developed countries over the last century that babies have been fed purees as a weaning method. Coincidently (or not) it is also in developed countries over the last century that huge populations are living with very warped relationships with food, relying on pharmaceuticals to keep their bodies together while they drink chemical-laden sodas and eat mechanically processed fast food. Are purees entirely to blame? No, of course not. But pureed weaning certainly hasn’t helped kids build positive relationships with good food.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH PUREES?
There’s nothing wrong with pureeing food. Some veggies, like carrots, are a choke hazard for little mouths if left raw. So it makes perfect sense to steam and puree carrots for your baby to eat. But here is a list more thoroughly explained in the book for why you shouldn’t serve only purees at every meal for your 6-12 month old:
- Store-bought purees are lower in nutritional value than fresh produce because it has been heavily processed at high temperatures.
- Store-bought purees have limited flavor variety, offering only the lowest common denominator flavors like peas, apple and green beans which can inhibit a child’s willingness to explore new flavors later. When is the last time you saw a radish puree in a Gerber jar?
- Spooning purees into the baby’s mouth takes the eating controls away from the baby, a skill that must be learned later when the baby may actually be at a greater choking risk (I’ll explain in a second).
- Whether you buy or make purees, baby is eating something different from the rest of the family. Baby learns through mimicking parents, so it makes most sense for parents to share foods with her, rather than eating one food while serving something entirely different to her.
WHAT ABOUT CHOKING?
When I feed my baby publicly, the most frequently asked question I receive is, “aren’t you worried that she is going to choke?” Not really. And here’s why: As the BLW book explains, babies are born with a gag reflex that is near the tip of the tongue, a great distance from the choke zone of the throat. As the baby gets older, the gag reflex travels back on the tongue until it eventually settles way down the throat IN the choke zone. By introducing solids earlier (6 months), rather than later (12 months), baby can learn to manipulate foods in her mouth while the gag reflex is way up front, providing a huge safety margin between the gag reflex and the actual choke zone. When babies are introduced to solids later in their development, that distance between the gag reflex and the choke zone is much narrower so foods are more likely to get lodged and become a danger.
WHAT DOES A BLW MEAL LOOK LIKE?
The beauty of a BLW meal is that if you are preparing healthy foods for yourself, you don’t have to do much to alter it for baby. This makes meal prep actually much easier and cheaper than buying or making specially prepared purees for baby. The big rules:
- Stick to whole, real foods from the produce, bakery, meat and dairy shelves at the store. Skip the processed dry goods in the middle. That’s where all the crap ingredients lurk.
- Avoid processed sugars and sodium. Not only are both bad for your baby because it taxes their little systems to process them, but this is your best opportunity to teach your child how to appreciate foods that have not been compromised by cheap flavoring. Humans are conditioned to LOVE sugar and salt. You don’t need to teach your baby to enjoy it. She’ll taste it one day and get hooked. But try to delay that day as long as possible so she can build a strong relationship with whole foods first so she doesn’t rely on either salt or sugar to “flavor” her foods.
The bulk of the book explains best first foods and how to actually administer them. I won’t get into it here. I will say that for us, we started out with a variety of softer foods (banana, avocado, peaches, cheese, etc.) and progressed into more advanced foods like what she ate for dinner last night: a bowl of brown rice with tofu and steamed vegetables with frozen blueberries (halved) for dessert.
WHAT I’VE TAKEN FROM THE EXPERIENCE:
I bought this book because I want my daughter to have a wide, adventurous palette that discerns real foods from artificial. Baby-Led Weaning has helped greatly in this endeavor by giving me the confidence as a parent to introduce new foods to her while her taste buds are still developing. An unintended consequence of reading this book is that it changed my own relationship with food. BLW made me acutely aware that my actions have lasting consequence in my baby. She eats what I eat. She shares my bowl. She watches my reaction to trying new foods. She trusts my food decisions. The book made me realize that my baby’s food decisions are not based solely on the foods I place before her, but also in those I place before myself. And we’re both the better for it.
