Amy Bentley (0s):

The manuals indicated you weren't supposed to feed your babies, fruits and vegetables until after two years of age, there were real fears of diarrhea and dehydration, and it was not really known where those diseases came from.

Katie Ferraro (14s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, 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 the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Well, Hey guys, and welcome back. Do you ever take a look at all the crazy baby food items that are for sale at the store today and wonder like, how did these get here? I mean, what did people feed their babies before the advent of commercial baby foods?

Katie Ferraro (55s):

Well, as a new mom who also happened to be a food historian, my guest today, Amy Bentley wondered exactly the same thing. Amy is a professor in the department of nutrition and food studies at New York university. And she's the author of one of my favorite books. It's called "Inventing Baby Food, Taste, Health and the Industrialization of the American Diet". Now, Amy writes and researches and speaks about the social historical and cultural contexts of food. And she has a particular interest in baby food. For her book, inventing baby food is one of those books I've just read it over and over again. And I always find something new and shocking. Like, how at one point in the 1950s, for example, the commonly accepted age for introducing baby food was five to six weeks of age.

Katie Ferraro (1m 39s):

Just thinking about that, that was less than a hundred years ago. And then there was actually even some doctors around that time, endorsing the introduction of solid foods within 24 hours of birth. So Amy's researched all of the history of baby food and how industrialization of the food supply, plus shifting child-rearing philosophies have all shaped so many of the contexts about how we think about starting solid foods with our babies today. So with no further ado, I want to introduce you guys to Amy Bentley, PhD, author of inventing baby food. And we're going to be talking about what did babies eat before baby food was invented? Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining me. It's a pleasure to speak with you again.

Amy Bentley (2m 16s):

It's nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Katie Ferraro (2m 19s):

All right. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do? What made you become interested in the social historical and cultural aspects of food and in particular baby food?

Amy Bentley (2m 28s):

Oh wow. Well, I was a graduate student in the late eighties looking around for a dissertation topic and I was interested in World War II as a period and women's experiences. And, I remembered my mother's stories as a child. She lived in Oakland, California and her mom had grown up on a farm. So she actually knew how to grow vegetables in their victory garden, unlike their neighbors. And, I just remembered my mother's stories about victory gardens and capturing fat in a can on the back of the stove to save, to donate for explosives, things like that. And I asked the archivist, I said, "do you have anything on victory gardens?" And he said, "oh, well, let me go back and look" and went back and, pretty soon came shuffling out with a Dolly cart full of boxes and boxes of materials.

Amy Bentley (3m 14s):

He said, "Yeah, there's a lot here. And I don't think anyone's looked at it." And I was like, "Yeah, that's like a historian's dream to find documents that haven't been uncovered or evaluated." And so my dissertation turned out to be a history of World War II, food rationing with a focus on women's experiences. And then when I was looking around for a topic for my second book, I had a baby, and that baby, you know, turned five months--four months--whatever. And I was in the grocery store looking at the aisles and aisles of baby food products. I thought, "Wow, there's just, there's so much here. " And there's baby bottles that have the Pepsi logo on them.

Amy Bentley (3m 56s):

And wow, this little jar of apple sauce is 60 cents or whatever. And then, wow, there's a Canon the other aisle that's cheaper than this. And it's the same thing. Anyway, I thought, "Well, what did people feed their babies before there was baby food?" And then I thought, "Well, well, I can figure that out. I'm a food historian." So the project just unfolded from there and became a really interesting journey. And I had two babies more. So, you know, three babies later, I had a book as well.

Katie Ferraro (4m 24s):

Okay, Your book is one of my all time favorite books. You guys it's called "Inventing Baby Food, Taste, Health and the Industrialization of the American Diet". I highly recommend it. If you're feeling like pressure to go buy all of these kinds of wacky, I like to call them fake foods. Like you walked down that aisle at Target and, like a lot of moms, like they registered at target. And then they went and bought a lot of like formula or breastfeeding supplies at Target. So like the natural progression is like, well, when my baby turns six months, I'm just going to go to the baby food aisle. And literally like, there's no food in that aisle. Like tell us a little bit about what the current landscape is with regard to baby food. And then maybe juxtapose that to like, like what did we do 100 years ago when there wasn't that wacko aisle at Target?

Amy Bentley (5m 5s):

Right? The fun part of the project is to look at what was going on with infant food, feeding practices and recommendations. Now, of course it was a little bit earlier in my case, compare that to when I was a baby in the 1960s, when I interviewed my mom about that and then comparing it to the early 20th century where baby food really got it started in the 1920s. I mean, let me go back, let me start from the beginning and then move forward if you don't mind. So prior to the 1920s, there was this thing called food for infants, but it wasn't its own category. It was a larger category of soft foods for infants, the elderly and sick people.

Amy Bentley (5m 47s):

And you would have 19th century cooking and home manuals with recipes, for wheat gruel, you know, like cream of wheat or beef broth or scraped beef and beef and wheat were seen as the strength producing foods that were important. If you were sick, if you were old and you didn't have teeth and you needed soft foods, or sometimes if you are babies, but you really didn't feed babies solid foods until nine to 12 months of age. So definitely late compared to how, what the recommendations are now, but extremely late as we'll see in the mid 20th century, moreover, you, the manuals indicated you weren't supposed to feed your babies, fruits and vegetables until after two years of age.

Amy Bentley (6m 33s):

And definitely after the summer, there were real fears of diarrhea and dehydration. There were fears of cholera and dysentery, and it was not really known where those diseases came from. And it was thought that maybe there was something in fruits and vegetables. Of course they have a laxative effect and it would cause, you know, diarrhea or whatever, but it was all mixed up with what is a disease? What is bacteria, you know, before this was all worked out. So in fruits and vegetables, moreover were, didn't seem to have a lot of value food value in them. It was wheat and beef. Those were the big strength producing foods and vegetables were like, nice, but maybe not necessary and especially not for babies, but that all changes as in the 19th, when vitamins are discovered and then fruits and vegetables have this tremendous food value.

Amy Bentley (7m 20s):

Importance that they had not had before. And all of a sudden people began to -- not all of a sudden -- but people began to reevaluate fruits and vegetables for adults, but then also for infants. Well maybe these are important to feed infants at earlier ages. So that happens at the same time. The food supply is industrializing. You're getting canning, manufacturing, mass production of foods, including canned fruits and vegetables. The Gerber in Michigan have a canning facility for fruits and vegetables. And the there's a folklore story that Dorothy Gerber, the mother is working, trying to prepare fruits and vegetables, puree them for her child because now it's, that will give your children fruits and vegetables, but puree them about--they should be about seven or eight months of age and she's frustrated.

Amy Bentley (8m 5s):

And she tells her husband, "Well, you've got a canning facility. Why don't you do this in your canning facility? And then I don't have to do it." I think it's kind of folklore, but it could be true,

Katie Ferraro (8m 15s):

Sound like a marketer had some influence in this story. You know what I mean?

Amy Bentley (8m 20s):

I agree. It's not actually the first. The first commercial baby food is produced in Rochester, New York by another guy. But, so, maybe if it begins to be manufactured in late 1920s and 30s, and then also at the same time, you have the perfect storm of the medicalization of childbirth and the development of specializations called pediatrics, OB GYN. You know, where specialists are claiming control over infant feeding and childbirth. You're also getting the rise of advertising. So advertising is fueling product development. So Gerber, which is creating baby food, is advertising nutrition journals in medical journals, ladies home journal, other women's magazines.

Amy Bentley (9m 6s):

And then it's a popular--it's both pushed by the industry, but it's also very popular for parents, for mothers. They're looking for a little bit of relief in the kitchen, and there's a huge emphasis on cleanliness and sterility and you have to produce it a certain way. So it feels like an extra tour. So it's popular for women. It's pushed by doctor, you know, also promoted by doctors. Grocery stores start to develop displays and sections and eventually aisles, you know, coincides with the baby boom, post-war baby boom period. And then it's just, in a matter of really like 20 years, 25 years, one generation becomes a Rite of passage.

Amy Bentley (9m 52s):

And so by mid century, most American children are fed baby food about six to eight weeks after birth. And most of those babies are consuming Gerber baby food. So I just--huge lightning fast, in relative terms-- transformation of infant food. Of course parallel to that is emerging infant formula. That is also becoming more important.

Katie Ferraro (10m 13s):

And I know people are going to think you just made a mistake when you said six to eight weeks. So like you could just clarify that that was actually like the recommendation at one point, right? Was six weeks after birth to start solid foods.

Amy Bentley (10m 25s):

Yeah. Six to eight weeks. And in fact, some doctors are advocating like 24 hours after birth. So, as the volume, as the amount of material of baby food increases, the average age of consumption--first consumption of solid foods--starts to go down. So it goes from about a year after birth down to nine months, six to seven months. And then by the 1950s and 60s, the average age is six to eight weeks after birth. And some doctors have manuals prescribing 24 hours after birth. So there's no studies that show it's not okay.

Amy Bentley (11m 5s):

And so "if it's a little is good, a lot is better" sort of mentality. Well, solid food is good. It's strength producing. It helps you fall asleep. It's we want our child to be strong and healthy. And if that family is feeding their child baby food that early, well, then, you know, we can too. And so doctors are a little worried about it, but parents are really driving it and a culture of abundance of a post-war American ethos, where America is the superpower. And we feed our children. We use science. We use technology.

Amy Bentley (11m 44s):

We know what's best through those mechanisms and we don't breastfeed our babies. Like those people in national geographic, you know. We're civilized. So it's all wrapped up in these cultural ideas of civilization, modernity, belief in science and technology. And so it's this perfect storm of all those, you know, cultural scientific ideas about wellness and health wrapped up in one. So there aren't studies that showing feeding infant solid food early is not okay. And so that's, that's where it sits for a while until the 1970s and 80s, when there's a re-evaluation of that.

Katie Ferraro (12m 18s):

And can you talk about where we are now? Because I think people are surprised to hear that, like we didn't even--Katie, are we talking about waiting until six months of age plus showing the other signs of ready to feed. Six to eight weeks of age? Like how in such a short period of time did it change and what do we now know about waiting and why it's better?

Amy Bentley (12m 34s):

Yeah, well eventually they start to do studies. There are a few doctors that are going, wait a minute, wait a minute. That, no, let's think about this. The American Medical Association issues some recommendations or American Pediatric Association. And finally some, you know, studies are showing, okay, well maybe an infant's GI system isn't really ready for food until later. Maybe this can increase later, later, like obesity and health issues. If we're feeding infants, all of this food and they can't turn their head to refuse it, or, you know, maybe there's more in breast milk than we thought. I mean, for a long time, it was like feeling like breast milk was deficient, was a deficient fluid, that was not good enough for kids.

Amy Bentley (13m 18s):

And if we fed them food and formula, it would be better. And so those ideas are changing with the counterculture that late 20th century, you know, 1970s and 80s, re-evaluation of science, re-evaluation of belief in experts and a reassertion of motherhood. And then, you know, naturalization of like, "Well, I'm the mother I know better." So kind of reclaiming that through the women's movement and other, you know, La Leche League and other organizations, just a cultural ethos that changes in the late 20th century that reclaim some of that space. And therefore pushes back, you get a consumer movement, Ralph Nader, et cetera, consumer movement pushing back against the corporations that saying, "wait, all this food has all the-- look it's got salt.

Amy Bentley (14m 8s):

It's got sugar. It's got additives. What's in it?" So the Senate holds hearings and then slowly the age pushed--recommended introducing solids--pushes back to, okay, then it's like two to three months of age and then it's four to six months. And now we've sort of settled around six. You know, sometimes they're saying, don't wait too long because you know, now we know other things.

Katie Ferraro (14m 30s):

Certainly, the increased risk of, you know, food aversion, picky eating the later you wait, but certainly increased risk of choking and a number of other, you know, food allergies and relationships. Some data even indicating overweight and obesity with early start. So, for quite some time now we've been kind of set at the six month mark though, in the context of time, would you say?

Amy Bentley (14m 47s):

I would say that. Yeah.

Katie Ferraro (14m 48s):

And so then if we're looking at just even the last decade. One thing I love about your book, was when you publish, it was really when pouches were starting to take off, could you speak how pouches have really revolutionized the baby food industry? I interviewed my own mom for the podcast. Recently. She was talking about remembering baby food jars. And we were reminiscing about when, like there should be like baby food dessert. Like I remember like seeing with blueberry cobbler, like that was a thing. We laugh at it now, but like it's almost as asinine what's in pouches. Sorry, that's my opinion. That's not your opinion.

Amy Bentley (15m 19s):

So baby foot originally was produced in tin cans. That's how it came. That was how a lot of most processed food came. But eventually, pretty quickly switched to jars because it was important for women to see through those jars and to look at the contents. It's partly why you had to have so many emulsifiers and additives because you didn't want the contents to separate and you wanted a nice bright color. So jars became the norm. I would say definitely by the 50s, 40s-50s and those little jars became iconic because you could use them. And in arts and crafts projects, you could use them in, in shop to hold chops, to hold nails.

Amy Bentley (16m 1s):

And they were really the standard until early 21st century, when the pouch came in as a new technology. In some ways, makes total sense because there's other foods that are packaged in pouches. You know, we had StarKist tuna in pouches. We've got those Go-Gurts in pouches. The gel packs that athletes are using. And so, you know, to use that technology, to create pouches. On one hand, make sense, and also extends these values that we as Americans prize, which is mobility and convenience. So we can just grab a couple of its pouches, stick them in the bag, go out to the park, go to this, do run errands, open up the pouch, hang it, hand it to the kid, right?

Amy Bentley (16m 47s):

So it does what we already want baby food to do. And value. 'Course. The downside is, it further individualizes food and feeding. So, you know, even just to unscrew a jar and, and take a spoon out and feed an infant with a spoon or hands or whatever, you know, that is an interactive exercise. And so there's stuff going on. There's communication. There's language. You're teaching children about food rules at a say if it were a meal with other people, but if you're just taking a pouch and handing it to the kid in the stroller, or, you know, just, then that's a totally individualized, atomized way of eating. And you're missing a lot of socialization that goes on. I mean, that's just one thing.

Amy Bentley (17m 27s):

Pediatric dentists, aren't so crazy about them because they can just like, you know, get goo on your teeth.

Katie Ferraro (17m 31s):

Speech-language pathologist hate them because it's not a required developmental milestone for your baby to learn how to suck out of a pouch. I mean, dietician myself, you don't like them from a nutrition standpoint, it's watered down apple sauce or versions of foods that babies could be eating. And from a $3-4 a pouch, in some cases like, can we talk about the baby food companies are not making these for you because they're convenient. They're making a killing on what's essentially apple and pear puree.

Amy Bentley (17m 55s):

Yeah. Right. That's the primary. That flavor is sweet. And you know, the, the number one ingredients, usually apple or pear puree. But I have to say. I have a little sympathy for some of these products because they're interesting and they're fun. They're fun to try. I mean, on one hand we shouldn't allow our parenting or our life to be driven by consumption and consuming. However, we live in a totally consumerized world. We get cues 24/7. So much of our life in every realm is about this idea of consumption and consuming. I'm not saying that's a great idea, but I'm just saying like, in that realm of consumption, trying new products is interesting and stimulating, you know, like it's, it's different.

Amy Bentley (18m 39s):

And so if there's a new thing that comes on the market trying it, I mean, I understand that impulse

Katie Ferraro (18m 45s):

It's novel for sure. But now it's almost just like, that's the norm. Like it's not novel anymore. Parents just think they need to have pouches

Amy Bentley (18m 51s):

Yeah. Yeah. And there is some pushback and I've noticed some baby food companies now like turning away from the pouch. You know, I watched my niece feed her baby with a pouch. It was interesting. She took the pouch and she-

Katie Ferraro (19m 1s):

Oh my God, if you were my aunt, I be so, so intimidated to feed my baby in front of you.

Amy Bentley (19m 7s):

I was just slyly watching. I didn't even know. She knew, I wrote this book, frankly, I'm not sure, but she was squeezing the food from the pouch onto a spoon and then feeding the babies.

Katie Ferraro (19m 14s):

And that's what we do. In baby led weaning, like you can squeeze it into a bowl and put it on a preloaded spoon and allow the big, like, take no issue with purees. It's an important texture for babies to learn how to master. It's just not the only texture they can eat. And I think some parents think buying three or four pouches is nutritionally complete for an eight or nine month old. And it certainly is not. So then they still have to go and make real food on top of it. So.

Amy Bentley (19m 39s):

Totally. I definitely am in agreement. It's another technology and it has problems. Absolutely.

Katie Ferraro (19m 44s):

I'm always curious. Are you ever going to write a second edition of your book?

Amy Bentley (19m 49s):

I'm don't know if someone were interested?

Katie Ferraro (19m 51s):

I'm interested! With the largest baby led weaning community is interested. Like your book is amazing. You guys, if you haven't read it, Inventing Baby Food, I'll link to it on the show notes here at blwpodcast.com, but such an interesting read, just if you're at all, even remotely interested in food, food history, even if you're not. I know like my mom has read it and she's like, gosh, I forgot about this. And that the history of the marketing, the pictures in it are amazing. My favorite is the chart that shows what you were explaining a little bit earlier is like the medical establishment encouraged solid foods for babies as young as six weeks old and how that's changed. Like it's a wonderful book, great visuals. I highly recommend it, but I'd love to see an updated version of it.

Amy Bentley (20m 31s):

That would be great. Well, I think what I want people who read it and women, but also men as well did come read it and to take away, is that a couple of things. One, look at how practice and advice shifted over the time period, you know, and we should trust the advice that we have and trust the science, but also recognize that we're in a cultural moment and we are affected by that cultural moment. And some things may change later. So to note, note how ideas about wellness and health changed over time and how that is affected by consumerism and byproducts, but also this idea of what remains the same as the anxiety surrounding like being a good mother.

Amy Bentley (21m 14s):

Like what does it mean to be a good mother? And what, what should I feed my baby? And, and that is a constant women have always worried about that. And just the answer has been different things. However, I also think, you know, I was a child of the baby of the early sixties. I was fed infant formula. I was fed Gerber baby food.

Katie Ferraro (21m 33s):

And you live to talk about it, Amy.

Amy Bentley (21m 36s):

Exactly. I've I was loved. I had warm clothes and a house and I was, you know, well, well cared for, and I turned out, all right. So some of that anxiety should just be allayed by like, you do the best you can. You provide those basics. You provide a ton of love and don't make food too big of a deal. Like, just like the anxiety that a parent feels. Like watching a child eat on a plate, is the worst thing you can do to a child because the child will absorb those feelings and it will make food, a fraught anxious exchange. So the more you can just relax about it, enjoy it, make food a family, communal event, talk about taste and flavor with children, be excited about different kinds of foods, the better off.

Amy Bentley (22m 24s):

I think that children will be.

Katie Ferraro (22m 25s):

And, something thing that you talk about, which is the, how pouches individualized food and feeding, and versus that communal aspect of learning, how to eat with your family at the table that we're missing that socialization piece. I think right now is a very interesting time where we're seeing the exact same thing happen with the introduction of allergenic foods. Is that, there's all of these supplement companies now involved making these powders in these stick packs and these mix-ins and preying on parents' fears for the introduction of real food. And again, I'm totally biased as a registered dietician whose entire life work is teaching parents how to feed their babies food. But I see parents like if that becomes the norm or they see that it's marketed very heavily to them in a very short period of time. So many parents have just even begun to doubt their baby's ability to eat, you know, safely prepared peanuts or shellfish or shrimp.

Katie Ferraro (23m 8s):

And just a few years ago, those products weren't even around. I feel like, like the next volume of the book should be about this medicalization of allergenic food introduction, because it's certainly, I mean, it started in 2017, but it is taking off through the roof right now.

Amy Bentley (23m 23s):

That is such an interesting idea. I really liked that idea because it's basically, it's like a pill. It's like medicine, like a teaspoon of this, a tiny gram of that, like instead of thinking of it.

Katie Ferraro (23m 33s):

And very arbitrarily chosen, certainly not steep. I mean, all the research that shows that introducing solid foods early helps prevent food allergy. Those studies were done on children who ate food, not supplements and powders that aren't even real food. I mean your baby, they can eat these foods. And yet it's crazy how much marketing goes into convincing parents that they can't. And in a short period of time, there's a whole generation of parents. Like, gosh, I mean, some of these programs are $200 a month.

Amy Bentley (23m 54s):

That's incredible.

Katie Ferraro (23m 54s):

For three allergens. Like you want to know much an egg, a peanut and a little bit of dairy costs. Like you can do this for significantly cheaper, but it is. I mean, again, a lot of it is about marketing and that's what I think is important about your book is it is important to have this discussion that a lot of this is about marketing. Again, I'm always trying to market food to parents, but you're sometimes up against, you know, really large multinational companies. I mean, Gerber is owned by Nestle, the largest food company in the world. Like let's get real about what's really at stake here is, you know, $4 for a pouch? It's insane!

Amy Bentley (24m 29s):

Yeah. The pouches feel, I mean they haven't supplanted the jars have, have they? or are they-

Katie Ferraro (24m 30s):

Where have you been? You can't even find a jar of baby food anymore.

Amy Bentley (24m 34s):

Gosh, I haven't checked lately.

Katie Ferraro (24m 34s):

Every time I go to Target, I think of you, I'm like, should I send her this picture? The one that kills me. Shelf stable yogurt, like how gross is that? You guys, if it were actually yogurt with live active cultures, it would need to be refrigerated. And yet first ingredient sugar, like it's almost laughable. And I was like, we were actually looking at a lot of the ingredients in these allergenic products. The first ingredient for their cookies is sugar. Like, but the purpose is to introduce allergenic ingredients. Like you could just feed your baby that real food without the sugar. Like, to me, it seems very obvious, but I understand where the confusion comes because it looks more fun or you feel like you have to do it and you make such good points about like, okay, if I'm a good mom, I have to be a good consumer. I got to try these things and should I be buying this for my baby or signing up for this or that?

Katie Ferraro (25m 17s):

And it just supplants and displaces, the introduction of important, wholesome real foods for families is how I feel.

Amy Bentley (25m 25s):

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and it's interesting. There was a backlash against baby food in the 1970s in that DIY, you know, back to basics kind of, or early introduction of organics movement. And so women started like, well, I'm just going to make my own baby food. And it was a thing. And it was enough to upset the baby boom companies that, that they had to adapt and had to create organic versions, et cetera. Then we saw another version of that in the early 21st century. Again, like another backlash, like we're not gonna, we're not gonna buy this food, which is terrific. But then what happens is that you have those like $400 Breville baby food maker.

Katie Ferraro (25m 58s):

Oh my god, I die when those companies approached me to like, well, you promote this. I'm like, well, if you have a pan and it has a lid and you have water, how does your $400 baby food maker differ like that? Oh, it doesn't. Okay...

Amy Bentley (26m 12s):

It's so sad. They can't leave stuff alone. And we clearly have way too much money if there's a, there are people purchasing those things. There's people with way too much money.

Katie Ferraro (26m 18s):

But my concern is like people who don't have enough money. Like I remember seeing those being like, what is this doing that my pot and pans not doing it? Like, like, no! It's just does what a pot or a pan does. It's like, let's just call it what it is. It's a $400 pot.

Amy Bentley (26m 34s):

Yeah. It just preys on people's insecurities. And at the same time, it's fun and interesting. And there's nothing different with a two, a pan and some water. Basically. Yeah...

Katie Ferraro (26m 39s):

One thing that is interesting about baby led weaning is, it's one of the few things that appeals to a second time parent. Like, you know, that first parent they're going to register for everything and like buy all the baby stuff. And then you have a second kid. You're like, I don't need any of that. But if have a picky toddler, oftentimes those parents are kind of on the hunt for, okay, what can I do to help prevent picky eating in this second baby? They stumble upon, oh, babies can learn how to eat real food from their first bites. And then I don't have to do all this short order cooking stuff. So I think there is some value for, you know, the kind of anti-consumerism movement in that. Like how can we clear out all of this nonsense and just go back to basics, which I always ask parents in the context of your research, like, what did cave mom feed her baby?

Katie Ferraro (27m 19s):

When there wasn't an aisle full of pouches and shelf stable yogurt for babies at Target?

Amy Bentley (27m 22s):

They fed them their foods.

Katie Ferraro (27m 23s):

Modified versions of what the real family? It's just like so funny to spend all the time, convincing parents that babies can eat real food. And I mean, we were talking about, you know, how, how research changes. I always say as a dietician, like just job security, like one week butter's bad and then butter's good. And people like, I don't know. It was like, yeah, like it just keeps me in a job and I'm seeing it a little bit of tongue in cheek, but like guidelines really do change. And I know for parents, especially for allergenic food introduction, you know, when I was learning and studying nutrition 20 years ago in dietician school, we said, you know, you don't introduce the egg white till babies one. You don't know how many parents gonna be like, oh, my pediatrician is telling me not to do eggs till one, but that's literally 20 year old data. It has been obsolete for 20 years and yet we're still hearing it. So some of this stuff, you know, it doesn't change across the board.

Katie Ferraro (28m 6s):

I think there is still always, you know, a little bit of room for being up on what's happening in research and science.

Amy Bentley (28m 12s):

Definitely. Right. And if you wait, they used to say, wait three weeks before introducing a second food or something. Like if you waited in between foods-

Katie Ferraro (28m 18s):

Your bay will eat like five foods. Exactly. And I teach a hundred first foods approach. My program teaches babies, how to eat a hundred foods before they turn one. And we know like parents, what about three to five days between food? So it's like, gosh, if I could do anything to get doctors to stop saying that, because if an allergic reaction is going to occur, it happens within minutes or up to two hours following the ingestion of that food, not five days later. And yet we're slowing down unnecessarily introduction of foods, which does not lend to the diet diversity that we know babies need in order to become independent eaters and prevent picky eating. So.

Amy Bentley (28m 51s):

Speaking of that, can I, I want to say something. That, my book is not anti baby food, anti commercial baby food. I think it does have a place, especially in families who aren't regularly cooking or eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. And when we know only one in 10 Americans are eating a minimum number of fruits and vegetables. So three to five per day, one in 10, that's pretty sad and abysmal. And most of those vegetables are potatoes or tomatoes in the form of ketchup, French fries, potato chips, pasta sauce. So they're not even necessarily real vegetables. So in, in homes where there's not traditions of strong, you know, eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, those little jars of baby food are actually protective.

Amy Bentley (29m 36s):

You know, the, those studies that show that babies, you know, at six months of age are eating egg white or green vegetable and a red vegetable. And then once they stop eating baby food, their number of vegetables drops and they are moving. Some of them are moving on to French fries and happy meals. So I do always want to point out that like that convenience and that ubiquitousness of baby food has a place for certain families where it makes sense. You know, I don't want to make anyone feel guilty and it would feel like they're not enough of a parent. If they're not making all their own baby food, you know, everybody. That's an individual choice and you want your baby to eat the healthiest possible, under the conditions that you can, you know, provide.

Amy Bentley (30m 19s):

So I do, I feel like it's important to point that out,

Katie Ferraro (30m 22s):

Certainly. And I couldn't agree more that there is a place for it. Like you're on a road trip, you're on an airplane and you can't have a full-blown baby led weaning meal. But, is it the only food that babies should be eating? No. Does the marketing of these products imply that they're nutritionally complete if you combine them with stage two and three and four and all this arbitrary marketing jargon, like there certainly is some trickery involved in it. And I think your book does a good job of pointing out just how much marketing is involved in these products. And once you're aware of it, sometimes I'm like, like, I know we were just talking about this with the girls I work with. They were saying they hate abandoned cart emails. I'm like, dude, I love abandoned cart emails because I always forget. And I'm like, no, it's so mean they're like tracking you. And like, I actually forgot, like sometimes I like being marketed to. I like sponsored and targeted marketing, but you know, within reason, like some of these products are not necessary.

Katie Ferraro (31m 6s):

And I think when we talked about like baby food dessert, like, can we all agree across the board that no added sugars for babies up until age two is like a good thing that the AAP recommends. But, what percent of baby foods have sugar as the first ingredient? And there are grams of added sugar. If the grams of added sugar line is not zero, you should not buy it for your baby is a pretty good rule of thumb. And it rules out most of the foods that are marketed to parents to feed to their babies. You mentioned a certain brand of yogurt, like baby yogurts have added sugar in them, but babies can eat real yogurt that doesn't have sugar in it. Like that's where I kind of draw the line.

Amy Bentley (31m 43s):

Definitely. Right. Those, and then those makeup products like toddler milks, you know, that are chocolate flavored. Like just those definitely seem evil.

Katie Ferraro (31m 49s):

I do a lot of speaking for WIC. And that's one of the most requested presentations that I do is about toddler milks. Because across the board, we can all agree that toddler milks are asinine. Like.

Amy Bentley (31m 59s):

Yeah.

Katie Ferraro (31m 59s):

Okay. You mentioned ketchup as a vegetable. And I always think of you when I hear about ketchup as a vegetable. Tell us about your work, helping us to learn about ketchup as a vegetable.

Amy Bentley (32m 14s):

Oh, we have, I did a geeky deep dive into the whole 1981, ketchup as a vegetable debacle that in the Reagan administration that lived on to infamy and now is like a shorthand phrase for a government gone wrong. In the early eras of the era of the Reagan administration, they work to dramatically slashed all budgets, including USDA and school lunch budgets by about a third. And so very, very quickly, they were forced to come up with new guidelines. And one of the guidelines they came up with was allowing a condiment to count as a vegetable, like relish, pickle relish. They also, is a long story, allowed like tomato paste to be a vegetable.

Amy Bentley (32m 57s):

Now these two became conflated rightly or wrongly. You could argue to be this idea that ketchup could count as a condiment, could count as a vegetable in children's school lunch, and therefore reduce the amount of money that the government had to spend on lunches. It blew up Senate hearings. Everybody kept caught onto the sprays. And in a matter of weeks, the government had to roll back and abandoned that. But I do this geeky deep dive into those recommendations,

Katie Ferraro (33m 24s):

I'm linking to the article. It's so good. You guys. At the end of the day, I know you've got to go, is ketchup a vegetable for babies?

Amy Bentley (33m 30s):

No! No way! It's not a vegetable for adults either.

Katie Ferraro (33m 32s):

Well, Amy, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I could talk to you all day long. I'm highly advocating for volume two of Inventing Baby Food. And then another book where you really teach us what's going on about the allergenic supplement stick pack programs out there.

Amy Bentley (33m 47s):

Very good suggestions. I'll think about that. Thank you so much.

Katie Ferraro (33m 50s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Amy Bentley. I love getting the opportunity to speak with her. She is so knowledgeable about the history of baby food. I don't know. I know some people think history is boring. I am fascinated by history. I'm a firm believer that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. And there have been so many mistakes in the world of infant feeding, and maybe we don't have it all figured out right now, but I, for one, am glad that we don't start solid foods with babies when they're six weeks old, because we know they're really not appropriate then. So I'm going to link all of the resources that Amy Bentley talked about, including her book, which is called inventing baby food. That'll be on the show notes for you for this episode, which you can find at blwpodcast.com/144. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.