Katie Ferraro (0s):

Any dry, crispy, crunchy foods for earlier eaters, I'm talking about six and seven-month-old babies who are just starting baby LED WEANING, not ideal. Okay. These can be a choking hazard, any dry food, particularly dry carbohydrate and dry protein foods. Be very challenging for early eaters to feed. 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. We're talking about crackers today and how do you safely select prepare and offer Crackers for Babies? And I'm doing this episode because parents have a lot of questions about crackers. And I like to start Each of these mini baby-led weaning training episodes with a BLW tip of the day. And my tip today is you don't have to feed your baby a cracker. If you want to hang tight, I'm going to share some ideas about what to look for and what you want to avoid, but there is documented proof of babies surviving not having had crackers. So if you're like doing fine without crackers, I just want to let you know, it's totally fine. You don't need a cracker to succeed with baby LED WEANING actually didn't even really want to do this episode because I was like, I don't want people to think they need a cracker because a lot of times parents will be like, well, I mean, I know a baby food is it's puffs and teething crackers and pouches.

Katie Ferraro (1m 33s):

And I'm like, no, and no, and no, but if you eat crackers in your real life and Babies can eat modified versions of the same foods, families eat, then it makes sense that maybe you would want to feed your baby a cracker. It's a quick story. I remember the first time I was taking my oldest daughter, Molly, once she was like eating solid food. Well, let me preface that with, she was supposed to be eating solid food, but I was doing traditional spoonfeeding with her and I was struggling and terrible at it. So she hated eating and she hated me, but we're going to go on an airplane. And I was like, oh, I should go to target. I go to the baby food aisle, and get some stuff for the plane. And it blew my mind that so much of the crackers that are out there marketed to babies are total CRAP. And I was like looking at these things.

Katie Ferraro (2m 14s):

And at the time I did not do baby LED WEANING it wasn't until I had my quadruplets that I even knew what baby-led weaning was. And then we had twins after that. So seven kids, age three and under, and then I did baby-led weaning with the last six. But for the first one, I had no clue, but I remember like as a dietitian, looking at this food, being like, this feels a little weird. Like these are really, really crunchy hard crispy foods, which she's never had before. Some of them have added sugar in them. Some of them have added salt in them. Like they feel very far removed from actual food. So I'm going to go back to the baby food aisle in a second. Talk about what I now know and what I would recommend staying away from. But you do not have to buy packaged food for your child to go on an airplane, just a heads up. You can, if you want to. And there's a couple of good items out there, but a couple of tips on what do we look for in crackers?

Katie Ferraro (2m 58s):

I'm gonna start with the positive. All right. If you're choosing a cracker for your baby to eat, the concern about crackers would be that as a package and process food, it's most likely going to be a, a refined white grain, which we don't want to get your baby hooked on eating a lot of white flour foods, because there's so many benefits to eating whole grains. And there's lots of safe ways that babies can eat whole grains. So I want you to think the only way your baby can get carbs is by eating like white carbs. So a lot of the crackers that are out there are made with processed refined white flowers, and we want babies to be eating a variety of different whole grains and on occasion in a pinch, some refined flours, sodium second issue. It's pretty hard to find a cracker that's low sodium. That actually tastes good. I'm going to share which crackers I don't buy and why, but general rule of thumb.

Katie Ferraro (3m 40s):

My general rule of thumb for baby-led weaning is I look, if I'm doing packaged fruit, that I'm gonna serve to my baby with the asterisks that most of the food you offer your baby and baby-led weaning or not packaged foods. But if they are, then I generally look for less than 100 milligrams of sodium per serving. Okay? If you want to learn more about minimizing salt during baby LED WEANING, go back and listen to episode 33, it's called salt three easy ways to minimize sodium for your baby. And I share more about sodium guidelines in there. So when picking crackers, most of the crackers at the store are not going to be whole grain and are going to have too much salt. Okay? Now I'm going to jump to what we want to stay away from when it comes to crackers and then come back and make some recommendations for pro going all over the board here, guys. But why do we not want to feed crackers?

Katie Ferraro (4m 21s):

Any dry, crispy, crunchy foods for earlier eaters, I'm talking about six and seven-month-old babies who are just starting baby LED WEANING, not ideal. Okay. These can be a choking hazard, any dry food, particularly dry carbohydrate and dry protein foods. Be very challenging for early eaters to feed. So when we talk about crackers, it's not a FIRST FOODS. So I die. When I see all these brands trying to market their quote unquote crackers as an ideal first food, because there's lots of soft, safe, real foods that Babies can eat. You don't need to go buy a package or processed food, but later on, and baby LED WEANING, a lot of parents will be like, okay, you talk about these different foods that we can sometimes offer on a preloaded spoon, but could I put them on a piece of toast or could I put them on a cracker and certainly for older babies.

Katie Ferraro (5m 3s):

And I do this generally in my phase, two of baby-led weaning in my programs after your baby's been doing solid foods for about eight weeks for most babies. That's when I would feel comfortable moving into combination foods and foods. That might be something that you would put on top of the cracker, but even then, I'm not comfortable doing dry, crunchy or crispy foods. And I often tell parents any of those dry carbohydrate foods, we want to soften them up or moisten them or get them nice and less crispy or crunchy. And you can do that with a sauce or a dipper or a topper. So even then we're sometimes uncracked bring the cracker if that's even a word, because we don't want it to be crunchy and crispy because of course that could be a choking hazard. So I did an episode about sauces and if you're looking for some ideas about ways to utilize dippers and toppers and sauces, go and listen to episode 207, that's five BLW sauce, recipes to make swallowing safer.

Katie Ferraro (5m 56s):

And there's more info in there about making this transition to kind of like those crunchy foods. So the crackers that I stay away from are the ones that are really hard and crispy. So like if you know the brand, Akmak, it depends where you're listening to this from, if you were to go find the lowest sodium cracker, it's always at the grocery store at the brand Akmak, but it's literally like a shingle. Like it's such a crispy food that it like hurts the roof of my mouth. And I am an adult in my forties and I have trouble eating those. So we stay away from the really, really crispy ones. But just because it has low sodium doesn't mean it's safe for babies. Now, could you soften that Akmak cracker up? It's kind of like the cereal Weetabix. I love certain types of Weetabix. The one that has minimal amount of sodium and no added sugar. And there's other varieties that have more.

Katie Ferraro (6m 36s):

So we stay away from those, but you can soften Weetabix cereal up with breast milk or formula or cows milk. If your babies had already been exposed to cows milk previously, and you can make it softer and then safer for the baby to eat. So sure you could soften up some of these crackers. Another thing to stay away from, and this is a huge issue in the baby food world is that a lot of the quote unquote baby crackers are actually rice crackers. And we really need to be cognizant of the amount of rice, especially in packaged foods that we're feeding the babies because of the concern for arsenic and arsenic toxicity. So we don't feed any rice food every single day. Yet. I know families that feed their baby, these organic, very popular brands that you can buy at major retailers that are, oh, well, there's not this and not that in it, but yeah, their number one ingredient is rice flour.

Katie Ferraro (7m 21s):

So we really want to watch out for rice flour in crackers. Cause you don't always think of it as being a rice product. But most of you probably know to certainly minimize the amount of rice foods that you're offering baby. And certainly don't offer any rice containing food every single day. Okay. So stay away from the really hard and crunchy ones, stay away from the ones that are high in sodium, stay away from the ones that have rice flour as the first ingredient, especially if it's something that you're going to feed regularly. And to be honest, there's no food that we should be feeding regularly or every single day. And as you know, babies don't absolutely need crackers, but sometimes parents want crackers. Okay. I'm thinking of things like I was just feeding a baby today and we were doing eggplant and we made a no added salt Baba ghanoush with roasted eggplant and tahini. And the baby had already had Sesame.

Katie Ferraro (8m 1s):

And that's something you can offer on a preloaded spoon, but for an older baby, you could also put that on a cracker to kind of soften it up and it's easy for the baby to pick up and eat that way. So in that case, what sort of cracker would you want to use? Okay, now I generally don't recommend certain brands because depending upon where you're listening in the world, you might not be able to get it. So when you're looking for crackers, look for ones that are a little bit on the softer side, if you can find ones that have whole grain great is at the end of the world, if they have refined white flour every now and then, no, of course not. And then also look for the lower sodium options as well. So in the United States, there's one brand that most retailers have. It's called Red Oval Farms and never heard of this brand until I started doing baby LED WEANING. They make stoned wheat, thins crackers.

Katie Ferraro (8m 42s):

So it's not like wheat thins from Nabisco. Cause those are really crunchy and tend to be too high in salt. But the Red Oval Farms makes a stoned wheat thin cracker it's low sodium. So it's got whole grains in it. It's low in sodium and it's a little bit on the softer side. And ironically it's generally located is what I've found in the wine section of a lot of grocery stores. So if you can't find them in your regular cracker sections, kind of like those bland, boring crackers that you would use for like wine tasting, but not as crispy as some of those. So that's one, if you need like a brand, sometimes parents are like just send me the link to her. I buy it on Amazon. The price goes all over the board on Amazon. I know a lot of stuff is weird with ordering and prices right now, but sometimes they're like $2 a box, but then sometimes on Amazon, they're like $12 a box.

Katie Ferraro (9m 23s):

Don't buy a $12 box of crackers, but that's a brand that if you're at a major retailer in the United States, you usually can find, and it has a red oval on it. So it's pretty easy to pick out. Cause the cracker aisle can be confusing in like any new category of food when you're searching for it for baby Led Weaning. The first time you walk in the aisle, like the bread aisle, you'll be like, oh my gosh, there's so much bread. But like 99% of them are not appropriate for baby led weaning because they have way too much sodium. I did a separate episode on bread, by the way, if you're interested in bread, because now that I said it, I know people are going to be like, well wait, what if I do like episode 183 was all about bread and When can babies safely eat bread? A lot of the same principles for bread also apply to crackers. So you might go and check that one out. So you don't have to feed your baby at cracker.

Katie Ferraro (10m 3s):

But if you do, there's a couple of things to look for. As I mentioned, lower in sodium whole grain, if you can not super crunchy at a dipper or a topper or a sauce to soften it up. So we're not feeding babies, hard crunchy foods, but also there's this notion that some parents have that, oh, they need to eat a teething cracker when they're teething. And so it just did an episode on teething. If you go back to episode number 213, it was about BLW teething tweaks. We talked about how teething is like a two-and-a-half-year process. Okay? So you don't have to feed your baby a special food for teeth and you don't have to speed them a special cracker because they happen to be cutting teeth because I guess someone remarketing, teething crackers, you'd be like, you have hooked this parent for two and a half years. If they think they need a special cracker for teaching, which you don't.

Katie Ferraro (10m 45s):

So your baby can eat a variety of foods, tastes textures. We really want to try to minimize the processed foods. If possible, when you're choosing crackers, get the lower salt. You don't want to feed the same food every day. Watch out for rice flour. We don't want to feed rice foods to babies. And hopefully you have a little bit of info you're armed with, if you go to the store and you're looking for a cracker, but also if you don't want to do crackers, that's totally fine too. So there are lots of variations in the types of crackers that you could potentially feed to your baby if, and when you are ready and crackers are kind of one of those in the middle foods that I definitely don't do them early on in baby LED WEANING, but they certainly can be safe for a little bit older babies. And as a dietitian specializing in baby LED WEANING, I love to focus on all of the foods that Babies can eat, but I do also think it's important to be educated about which foods you should steer clear of.

Katie Ferraro (11m 34s):

So I have a free feeding guide called 15 foods, never to feed, and it's a free download that explains 15 different foods and why babies. Shouldn't eat them with tips on how you can actually modify and alter them to make them safer. So I'm going to link that free handout. It's called 15 foods, never to feed it'll be on the show notes for this episode, which you can find at blwpodcast.com/217.