Meat: 5 Cuts of Meat I Never Offer Babies

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Katie Ferraro (30s):

When it comes to making meats safe for your baby to eat. I always say, if you can shred the Meat between your fingers and your thumb, then it's safe for the baby to eat with their gums. But stake in pork chops, they do not pass that test. I will not offer them to Babies because those foods are a huge choking hazard. Hey there. I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian College nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning Here on the Baby led weaning Made Easy podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with a confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning Today.

Katie Ferraro (1m 12s):

We are talking about Meat Meat. For those of you families out there who do eat animal foods, Meat can be kind of a pain point when it comes to feeding Babies. Like you know that there are Nutrition benefits from offering your baby animal foods like iron and zinc, and then there's the texture and the flavor and the taste experience for your baby. Not to mention when we talk about animal foods, almost half of the big nine allergenic foods, those are animal foods and we know we should be introducing them early and often. So there's lots of reasons why we would want to do meats for Babies, but I also totally get it that there's a lot of pushback from parents who are like, I just don't feel safe about it, or it's kind of a hassle. Or what I hear a lot is I don't actually know how to cook any of those meats from the protein part of your a hundred first foods list, Katie.

Katie Ferraro (1m 55s):

So today's Mini training episode is gonna be about Meat and I'm gonna be sharing five Cuts of Meat. I never offer Babies. Now I like to start out each of these Mini training episodes with a baby led weaning tip of the day. And today's tip is you want the Meat that you offer to your baby to be in soft shreddable strips of Meat. So the line that I always say is, if you can shred the Meat between your finger and your thumb, then it's safe for your baby to eat with their gums. And I want you to hang tight because in this episode, I'm gonna make it super simple for you by telling you five exact Cuts of Meat that I avoid and why. Before we start, I do have to say I do not love doing content about what not to feed your baby.

Katie Ferraro (2m 38s):

So the title's episode is five Cuts of Meat I Never Offer Babies. It made you click into it and listen to the episode. But I do think that there are more than enough judgy negative content creators out there when it comes to infant feeding. So before we dive into the five Cuts of Meat that I don't offer to Babies, I do want to suggest two other podcast episodes where I went deep all about the safe Cuts of Meat that you, you can feed your baby. So if you haven't already checked them out, be sure to listen to episode 177. Red Meat, your Baby Can Safely Eat. I go through all the different types of red Meat and how I make them safe for baby led weaning. And then also episode 178 white Meat your baby Can Safely eat with some food prep tips in there.

Katie Ferraro (3m 18s):

If you have my a hundred first foods list, the protein section has 20 different protein foods. We have it split into 10 animal foods and 10 plant-based protein foods that you can make safe for your baby. If you need ideas of protein foods in moderation that your baby can eat. If you do not yet have a copy of my a hundred first foods list, I give it away to everybody on my free weekly workshop called Baby led Weaning for BEGINNERS. You can Sign up for this week, workshop times, and grab a copy of your hundred first foods list if you go to baby led weaning dot co. So with no further ado, let's get started. Five Cuts of Meat that I never offer Babies. And why. First up is steak. You guys, steak is a solid piece of Meat.

Katie Ferraro (4m 1s):

If you had dentures and I took your dentures out and gave you a piece of steak, could you eat it? If you were a baby and you didn't have teeth and I gave you a piece of steak, could you eat it? No. And for those of you who have toddlers, you also know that steak is a very challenging food for them to eat and they've been eating for months and months. Steak is a cut of beef. Okay? I think a lot of times I see other accounts saying, oh, it's totally safe to feed your baby steak. Maybe they don't realize there's a lot of different Cuts of beef. It is totally safe to feed your baby beef. It is not safe to feed your baby solid pieces of Meat that you cannot dread between your finger and your thumb. So steak is out of the picture. I do lots of different Cuts of beef, though. I think beef is a wonderful food for Babies to eat. Two of my favorite Cuts of beef are chuck roast really cheap, too.

Katie Ferraro (4m 43s):

Super easy to make, nice soft shreddable Cuts of Meat and brisket is another one that I absolutely love. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back

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Katie Ferraro (5m 45s):

I also do ground beef from time to time. Actually, one of the most trafficked articles on our website is an article about five BLW Recipes using ground beef. This works for all sorts of ground Meat. I'll link that up in the show show notes, which you can find at BLW podcast.com/ 2 83. So number one, I don't do steak, but I got lots of other ways that you can make beef safe for your baby to eat. Kind of along the same lines as number two, pork chops. I love pork as a Meat for our Babies, but I like the fattier Cuts of Meat of all the Cuts of Meat, right? Fat equates to moisture when you cook a fatty Meat and that fat liquefies, it lubricates the protein strands and makes it easier for your baby to swallow. But a pork chop, okay is incredibly lean.

Katie Ferraro (6m 26s):

It's almost 100% pure protein with no fat. That's not the type of Meat that we wanna offer to Babies. Pork chops similar in texture to steak, right? You can't easily shred it between your finger and your thumb. It is not safe for your baby to eat with their gums, but I got lots of other ways to make pork safe. Two of my favorite Cuts of pork, pork shoulder or pork butt roast makes Those nice soft shreddable strips of Meat that your baby can Safely eat, but steer clear are the pork chops. Third, on the list of the five Cuts of Meat, I, Never, Offer Babies are chicken or Turkey breast. So chicken or Turkey being in the poultry family love poultry for Babies, but I stick to the darker Cuts, right? The legs, the wings, the thighs with that nice fatty content that helps make it safer for your baby to swallow.

Katie Ferraro (7m 7s):

I don't care how good of a cook you are, your chicken breast or your Turkey breast is always going to be on the dry side. And when your baby is just learning how to handle textures that aren't breast Milk or formula, we don't want to push them too hard by forcing them to eat a super dry Meat that they're not going to be easily able to munch, chew, move around their mouth, spit it out if they need to. So I steer clear of chicken or Turkey breast and instead, stick to the legs of the wings or the thighs when you're doing poultry. Fourth on the list, lamb, I always do lamb on day four of baby led weaning in my hundred first foods program. We follow my five step feeding framework and we introduce five new foods per week, a new fruit on Monday, vegetable on Tuesday, a starchy food on Wednesday, a protein food on Thursday, and then an allergenic food on Friday.

Katie Ferraro (7m 47s):

Always go wild with lamb on week one just to show you that even if it's a food you're not comfortable making or you don't make it that often, you can make these foods safe for your baby to eat. But when it comes to lamb, I no longer offer Stew Meat to Babies. And I've told this story a number of times, but about a year ago we were working with, actually It was our virtual assistant, Geneva. She lives in San Diego and we were working with her baby and we were doing baby led weaning on a boat cuz this family lives on a boat in a small space. And I was showing you all these different ways to make foods in small space kitchens. If you're not like a big cook or you don't have a lot of resources in your kitchen, I mean, they definitely did not on the boat. And we did lamb stew Meat, and it just doesn't get moist enough, it doesn't get soft enough and the pieces aren't long enough for the baby to pick up.

Katie Ferraro (8m 29s):

And this particular baby, baby Skylar, this is as close as baby has ever come to choking on Meat that I've worked with. And I realized it was because the Stew Meat really is not the Ideal cut of Meat for lamb. So I learned from my mistake and from there on out, I've also got it cheap and Stew is way cheaper than leg of lamb roast, but at this point, I am willing to cough up the extra dough for a leg of lamb roast. I love lamb roasts because again, really fat makes longer strips of fattier Cuts, of Meat stew Meat. You know, you need to cook it low and slow for a long, long period of time because it's a very tough cut of Meat. I just don't feel comfortable doing Stew Meat anymore for Babies. So I'm sticking to the fattier Cuts that I know make those longer nice strips of Shreddable Meat.

Katie Ferraro (9m 10s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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Katie Ferraro (9m 53s):

Fifth up on the list is raw or undercooked shellfish. Now this might kind of be a no-brainer for you, like obviously I'm not gonna serve raw fish to my baby, but when it comes to food safety, if we look at the data about foodborne illness, there is a disproportionate number of foodborne illness incidences that occur from raw or undercooked shellfish So. It is very important that you always cook to the proper internal cooking temperature because when it comes to shellfish, some of you might be like, well, I'm not gonna feed my baby shellfish, but shellfish is one of the big nine allergenic foods and fish is another one of the big nine allergenic foods. So I want to make sure that you're offering your baby these foods, but doing so in a manner that is safe.

Katie Ferraro (10m 33s):

And there are definitely lots of safe ways that we can make shellfish and fish safe for our Babies to eat. When it comes to cooking fish and shellfish for your baby, the USDA recommends cooking to an internal cook temp of 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes parents ask about ceviche, and I've definitely done ceviche for Babies. There's actually this really cool mom in our group. A while ago she was on my office hours. I do weekly live office hours for the parents in my paid baby led weaning program. And they ask questions and she's like, Hey, I wanna celebrate the baby's hundredth food and we wanna do ceviche. My family's Peruvian. Like, yes, this is awesome. You definitely can make ceviche for your baby. And with ceviche, right, you're, you're not cooking the fish or the shellfish with heat, but you're cooking it rather with acid. And so there's a few precautions that we go through to make sure that it's really safe for Babies to have, but there are some workarounds for shellfish.

Katie Ferraro (11m 19s):

But as far as you know, like offering raw oysters to Babies, no, I don't do that for Babies. I will definitely do ceviche, but only if I made the ceviche myself because then I know like how long I let the fish or the shellfish sit in the acid, the juice that was cooking it in order for it to be safe. So five Cuts of Meat I would not offer my baby, but lots and lots and lots and lots of ways that you can make Meat safe for your baby to eat. I'll put a bunch of resources related to all the stuff we talked about today in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at BLW podcast.com/ 2 8 3. Thank you you guys so much for listening. And thank you also to our network partners at AirWave Media. If you like Podcasts that feature science, food and using your brain, be sure to check out AirWave Media for some other amazing audio experiences.

Katie Ferraro (12m 5s):

My podcast home base is at BLW podcast.com and I'll see you guys next time. Happy feeding.