Katie Ferraro (0s):

So you guys, when you see recommendations like, oh, you need to feed your baby, this food in this order, or follow this meal plan this day, somebody just randomly made it up. There's only a few reasons why we need to hold on particular foods for babies or sequence them in a certain way. And this is why, 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 the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

Hey guys, welcome back today. We're talking about The order of the BABY LED WEANING foods that you offer to your baby. Does it Matter? I get this question a lot. Like why do you do this food or that food, or I'm doing this before that? Or I saw that I needed to do this before that. And I like to start all of these mini Baby led Weaning episodes out with a B LW tip of the day. And Spoiler Alert the Order of the foods that you introduce your baby to for the most part does not matter because the honest to God's truth is there's no hard and fast evidence that says you have to do pears before pineapple or pumpkin before parsnips now hang tight because there are some foods that you're going to want to wait to feed your baby.

Katie Ferraro (1m 26s):

I'll explain why in this episode, but all in all, I want you to know you have the ultimate freedom to feed your baby, the variety of foods that work best for your family. And I don't want you to be unnecessarily restrained by some contrived or fabricated baby led weaning food, feeding order. Quick story here before we get started. So in 2016, I created the a hundred FIRST FOODS approach to Starting Solid Foods. So at that time I was doing baby led weaning with my quadruplet babies after having struggled immensely with spoonfeeding, my oldest and our family Instagram account was like full on BLW spam and the baby quadruplets at the same time.

Katie Ferraro (2m 6s):

So we were approaching for that account, the 100K follower mark, and I wanted to do something unique to celebrate. So I'm like not balloons. So I started realizing, wait, the quadruplets had eaten a hundred different foods before they turned one. So I was kind of playing with this idea of organizing those foods into five distinct categories based on nutrition need with my dietitian background and want to help those babies achieve diet diversity and avoid nutrient gaps, you know, the whole thing. And then after that, we ended up having twins. So I used the twins, a hundred FIRST FOODS journey. It was kind of my playground or my sandbox for moving around the foods that the quads had done. So I swapped in a few foods that through additional practice and research, I recognized, gosh, these are safer options that I had done with the quads.

Katie Ferraro (2m 50s):

And to this day, no joke. I get messages from people who go so deep back into Instagram and they'll be like, why did you do green beans with the quadruplets, but not with the twins? Or why was the shellfish introduction for the quad shrimp, but then you crab for the twins. The reality is there's no hard fast rules for which foods you need to introduce when it really does not matter for the most part, there are some implications for food allergies and that's mostly what I'm going to touch on today. So does the order of the BABY LED WEANING foods that you feed your baby matter? No, not really. With two caveats. The first one is about allergenic foods. Now you're probably aware that there's the big eight allergenic foods Sesame was added recently.

Katie Ferraro (3m 32s):

So we called the big nine, whatever eight plus sesame and of those, we have pretty decent evidence for a few of them that introducing those allergenic foods early in often helps prevent food allergy. Now we have very strong evidence for peanut and a little bit less. So for milk and for egg. And then everyone's like, well, what about the other six? Well, there's a lot of studies underway about the effect of introducing those allergenic foods early and often. But one thing we know is that there's absolutely no benefit to withholding those allergenic foods. Our old guidelines used to say like, whoa, hold up. Don't introduce the allergenic foods until after one, but we know that that's not true now. So in the meantime, while we're kind of waiting for the rest of the research on the other six, I would say with regards to prioritizing the introduction of allergenic foods in the first three weeks of Baby led Weaning when your baby is six months plus showing the other reliable signs of readiness to feed, try to do milk peanut and egg.

Katie Ferraro (4m 24s):

That's not in any particular order, peanut egg, milk, egg, milk, peanut, whatever you want, but those are the ones that I put up front just because we have a little bit more data about them, but you still want to focus on introducing all of those allergenic foods early and often, if you can, again, because it has the potential to reduce allergy risk down the road. It's the only thing you have control over with regards to reducing allergenic risk. So do those allergenic foods early and often. And if you're looking for three to start with my suggestion is in any order, you feel comfortable with egg, peanut and milk. Now, the other caveat that I add about which foods to introduce in a particular order, or which ones to hold on, has to do with safety. There are a few foods on the a hundred FIRST FOODS list that I personally feel that babies do better with, or they're safer for them to eat.

Katie Ferraro (5m 10s):

Once they have one or more teeth. Now you may know that some babies are born with D it's totally gross. Look it up. There's actually pictures of that on the internet. It's not gross. It's just really unusual to see a new ward with teeth, but then there's other cases where babies don't get their teeth until after each one. And I want you to know that having teeth is not a prerequisite for needing to eat, but there are some foods that babies do do better with, if we wait on. So personally I wait on introducing, for example, chicken on the bone or meat on the bone, to be honest, you could give it to a baby and they could gum the heck out of it without teeth, but it's a much more efficient experience when that baby has a tooth or two against, with, you know, kind of extract that meat off the bone.

Katie Ferraro (5m 51s):

So it's kind of like an efficiency thing as well as a safety thing, because you might feel safer letting your baby do that once they have teeth. Another one is corn on the cob. I know your baby can do a lot of things with a really strong gums, but getting a kernel of corn off a corn on the cob. And by the way, babies eating corn off the cob is like the cutest thing in the planet. But it goes a lot more smoothly when babies have one or more teeth, but the rest of the foods, especially on my a hundred FIRST FOODS list, they can, for the most part, be modified and introduced, to be honest in any order that you feel comfortable doing that. Now I do have a list of 10 easy starter foods for baby led weaning. These are not, you have to do them in this order, or these are the best ones. It's just some ideas of some foods that even if you don't have like a strong cooking background are pretty easy to make safe for babies to eat.

Katie Ferraro (6m 36s):

And then our variety of foods, including some allergenic foods, fruits and vegetables proteins. So if you want to grab the 10 easy starter foods for baby led weaning, it's not just a list. I actually explain inside of this free download why these are some ideal FIRST FOODS. If you need some inspiration on where to start, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed with this idea of trying to feed your baby a hundred foods before turning one, grab my 10 easy starter foods for baby led weaning that's available on the show notes page for this episode, which you can find at blwpodcast.com /201. Thanks so much for listening, short and sweet hope. You have the freedom to introduce the foods that you want in any particular order that you feel comfortable doing, provided that you're making them safe for your baby led weaning baby.

Katie Ferraro (7m 23s):

By now.