Nutritious Baby Foods
Having a baby is the best thing in a couple’s life. When the baby is
still inside the womb, it is the mother’s duty to eat nutritious foods
to ensure that the baby will be healthy. Of course, by the time that the
baby is already out in the world, parents still have to make sure that
the baby gets the nutrition that he needs.
Babies have to eat mashed or solid foods at a certain age. Probably by
then, the couple is too busy to make a homemade baby food so they resort
to giving their babies a commercial baby food. Not only that it is an
instant meal to the baby but it is also less messy, time consuming, and
sometimes cheaper.
However, baby foods that can be easily bought in the market does not
have much nutrients compared too the ones that you can do at home.
According to the different studies, homemade foods have five times more
nutrients compared to the commercial baby foods. Aside from that, baby
foods in jars or boxes are cooked with tons of preservatives that are
not really good for your baby’s health.
One example is a serving of sweet potato. The content of the commercial
sweet potato baby food includes the vegetable, salt, and preservatives.
More often than not, these sweet potatoes were strained, making the food
lose some of its nutrients. On the other hand, the home made baby food
has only one ingredient, the sweet potato. It can be cooked by baking it
in skin and without the need to use for salt and preservatives. The 14
grams of sweet potato from commercial baby food only has 0.15 grams of
protein. While the home made sweet potato has 4 grams of protein in it.
Your baby will surely get the nutrition he needs when you try to take a
small amount of your time to prepare a homemade baby food. The more
nutrients they get, the healthier your baby would be.
In order to retain more nutrients in your baby’s food, you must not cook
it like you prepare your own meal. Although it needs flavor, cooking it
in fire would take out the much-needed nutrients for your baby’s food.
First of all, if you want to preserve the healthy components of the
ingredient, make sure that you buy fresh vegetables in the grocery.
There is no need to cook it at your stove since you don’t have many
flavors to add or meat to tenderize. If you will be using fruits, you
can simply use the blender to make a puree or a smoothie.
As for the vegetables, you can simply stew, bake, or mash it so that the
baby food will be packed with nutrients and vitamins that a growing baby
needs. Babies are not supposed to have an oil intake at an early age so
frying their food is a no-no. When you want to soften the texture of the
baby food, you can add water or formula milk to make it more nutritious.
There are some breast-feeding mothers who mix their breast milks with
the home made baby food. Doing so will make your child a healthier baby.
Home made baby foods, even without preservatives, can still be kept in a
cool storage and will last for several days. Not only that you made a
nutritious meal for your baby, you can also save money at the same time. |
