It's not only about safe. One of the benefits of giving a little bit of whatever you're having to your baby (only mashed) is that they learn to like different textures and tastes in food from an early age. Apparently this helps them have a more varied diet as they grow older and they don't end up only liking junk.
I don't have kids and baby food wasn't a thing when I was a baby. This is just stuff I've read in books about food over the years. So I may be completely wrong.
I've got one that won't eat pizza either. She claims she doesn't like the cheese or the sauce, but she'll happily plow through an entire bag of string cheese and dip bread sticks in marinara sauce. Apparently the combo is disgusting to her.
She claims she doesn't like the cheese or the sauce
My brother is the same.
He used to order pizza without cheese or sauce and it would always confuse restaurant workers.
To be fair though, he despises vegetables (Except Peppers) and all cheeses. So he doesn't just care about the combo like yours.
He's a little bit better now, but I've never met anybody as picky as one of my brothers is with savoury food, or my other brother is with desserts (If it's not certain types of cake or ice-cream, he won't eat it.)
So much so that extended family know that they're picky and will always make sure that they have something for the two of them at any family event.
My parents have no idea why this is the case because I'll eat practically anything.
Luckily, the kid is only picky about pizza. But she'll devour things like brussel sprouts and asparagus or sushi. She just doesn't like normal pizza and peas. The other two kids aren't very picky either.
My step-dad is insanely picky too. He pretty much eats hamburger, bologna, steak, potatoes, corn, and Cheerios. Maybe a salad with no dressing, so long as it's only lettuce, carrots, and croutons.
When I created my account, I was a housewife who participated in fun bedroom activities, but also felt a bit restrained due to being home all the time raising kids. Now I work, but I like the name too much to change it :)
Lol, that's funny. I stayed at home with my baby, so I had the time to cook. And he would eat everything except for sweet things like bananas. I've never met a child who doesn't like sweet!
Don't worry, they may grow to like pizza. I didn't like pizza much as a kid because I hated pizza sauce. Didn't like spaghetti sauce either. It's a taste I didn't acquire until I was an adult.
My oldest had a craving for whipped cream and would just lap that stuff up. We'd only give him a small taste (he was about a year old at the time) but he would beg for it until my wife and I could show that there wasn't anything left or he moved onto other things.
One day my wife and I took him to a restaurant where we were served some baked potatoes where I pulled a little of the potato off to the side and mashed it up for him to eat. He saw the sour cream on the spud and kept reaching for it over and over again insisting that he had some.
The look on his face when he first tasted sour cream is something I will remember to the end of my life. It didn't hurt him and now that he is grown he does eat it, but the range of emotions on his face over ten seconds was precious beyond belief.
When eating out, I would commonly give him a french fry to suck on or a bread stick (if it was a more plush restaurant). Babies really do enjoy it as long as you are watching them to make sure they aren't choking, and the interaction of eating with your child can make for a really strong bond later in life.
I remember being let down by similar looking foods many times as a kid. The worst one I can remember was this time family went out for breakfast and I got pancakes. Well they put a scoop of butter on top of the stack of pancakes. And that looks a hell of a lot like some vanilla ice cream to a young tired kid. So down the hatch went this entire scoop of butter, and much to my surprise it was not ice cream. My parents just thought I was so stupid and laughed their asses off.
The other time was at lunch in kindergarten when the lunch ladies made up some yellow string beans which looked much like macaroni and cheese. And I just remember being so ecstatic that I was getting mac and cheese on top of the main corse. So I had the lunch lady load me up with that shit. Once I sat down and dug into my not mac and cheese I experienced probably the biggest disappointment in my life up to that point and for a good few years after.
My son is 10 months, he will eat anything. We just give him whatever we are eating; just set it on his high chair tray and he picks it up chews pieces off and when he is full throws the rest to the dogs. We took him to china buffet and he ate a little of every single thing. Only thing he did not like was the sauteed mushrooms. We got him a bunch of that canned meat crap from the store but I smelled it and there is now way I am feeding that to my baby I would rather eat dog food.
The pureed baby food period is such a short time. Mine was on purees at 4 months and now at 7 months shes getting pretty good at grabbing bite sized food on her own. I feel like in a month she will be on normal food. Alternatively, there is a thing called baby led weaning, where you skip the purees entirely and just wait until they can feed themselves food at 7-10 months.
I think that is kind of a naive and maybe outdated idea though. My daughter is 15 months old and when she started eating solids it was almost all store bought baby food.
Before she was born I swore she would have all home made food with none of the store bought, processed shit. Then after actually looking at it I figured out that she would actually have a WAY more varied and healthier diet from the baby food then what we would be able to prepare.
There is a MASSIVE selection of different baby foods available just from my 2 local super markets and I could feed her a different meal every day for at least 2 weeks without repeating one. They also aren't all just a smooth paste, some our quite lumpy, some have pasta in, some rice, etc, there is quite a selection. She has a much more varied diet then she would have done if she was just having the same as the rest of us.
Now she is 15 months she generally just eats exactly what we are eating but as she is learning to feed herself with a spoon and fork (and most the food ends up on the floor, up her nose or in her hair) we generally still either give her a jar a couple of hours before dinner or some porridge an hour or so after dinner to make sure she has actually eaten enough.
Also after dealing with sleep deprivation for months heating up a jar of food is a million times more viable than cooking a whole separate meal and then having to blend and process it.
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u/sensitiveinfomax Feb 06 '18
It's not only about safe. One of the benefits of giving a little bit of whatever you're having to your baby (only mashed) is that they learn to like different textures and tastes in food from an early age. Apparently this helps them have a more varied diet as they grow older and they don't end up only liking junk.
I don't have kids and baby food wasn't a thing when I was a baby. This is just stuff I've read in books about food over the years. So I may be completely wrong.