Which Thanksgiving Foods Can Babies Safely Eat?

Katie Ferraro (0s):

And that mini map, which sections to the table is great to have when your baby is starting to join you in family meals reminds you to offer a variety of foods. Again, we put a little portion of protein, a little portion of fruit or vegetable and a starchy food. 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, leading you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hey guys, welcome back.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

Happy almost Thanksgiving at the time of this recording today's episode is Thanksgiving specific giving. Thanks a first of all for you guys for listening to the baby led weaning made easy podcast. I love getting to connect with you here. I released two episodes every week. Monday I do a mini Baby Led Weaning training. And then on Thursday, there's always an interview with another feeding expert or a guest, something related to feeding your baby. If you ever want to catch any of the older episodes or search for specific episodes. Cause there's like a lot of episodes. This is episode 181 doing two a week. It kind of adds up quickly, but we're covering tons of content. It's really easy to search. If you head to the podcast website, that's BLWpodcast.com and you can find pretty much an episode on everything.

Katie Ferraro (1m 21s):

And if you have an episode idea, I'm very thankful to you because some of my best episode ideas come from you guys. I grabbed my episode ideas from your suggestions from the written reviews for the podcast. So if you've been listening and you like what you're hearing, or if you have some suggestions on how to improve our episodes, you want to hear I'd love. If you could leave me a written review on apple podcasts, I single-handedly read every single review. So thank you for your feedback. And thank you for your episode. Ideas. Leaving a written review is what really helps other parents find the podcast to learn about Baby Led Weaning because we're interested in giving everyone's baby a safe start to solid foods with Baby Led Weaning. So Thanksgiving is just around the corner today's episode.

Katie Ferraro (2m 2s):

We're going to be tackling Which Thanksgiving Foods Can Babies Safely Eat. I know Thanksgiving can be anxiety inducing for lots of reasons like family holidays. Okay? That's like a whole different at the different type of podcast. All right. For focusing on the food though, why is it stressful for families? Because oftentimes it's the first time that your baby is going to be eating in front of someone else. That's not you. You are the one who knows your baby best. You're the one who should be comfortable offering your baby new foods. You're the one who should be there trying them. If you're the primary caregiver with your baby, right? We never ask someone else to try new foods with our babies if they're not intimately involved in the feeding process. So for most of the families, it's, whoever's listening to this podcast. It's probably the person who's picking the new foods, but Thanksgiving can freak us out because there's lots of other people around and maybe they're not used to seeing a baby feed themselves and maybe they want to grab a jar of pureed peas and foresee that to Your Baby.

Katie Ferraro (2m 53s):

Okay. Let me be like, why are you foregoing or skipping traditional spoon-feeding and all of that can kind of come to a bubble around Thanksgiving time. So I want you guys to be prepared for Thanksgiving. We've been practicing with a lot of meat content here on the podcast, because for those of you who do eat meat, there's Turkey at Thanksgiving, and if your baby hasn't had a lot of practice with meat that could like further contribute to your anxiety, maybe around Thanksgiving, but I want you guys to have a peaceful and a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving. So let's dive into which of the foods Babies can eat for Thanksgiving. Okay? Babies can technically eat almost all foods. And if Your Baby gets a bite of pumpkin pie, you guys, because grandma's slipped it in there, it's not the end of the world. I know some people are like, oh my gosh, have I done irreparable damage? Cause my baby had a bite of birthday cake or pie.

Katie Ferraro (3m 34s):

No, absolutely not. Not the end of the world, but there are, as you're preparing your Thanksgiving dinner, some really little modifications that you can do to help your baby enjoy and participate in Thanksgiving. So hopefully with Thanksgiving time, you've got a highchair that we hope get your baby right up to the table. Okay. I love a couple of high chairs. One of my favorite ones is the Nomi highchair. And I know we've had the designer of the Nomi, someone from their company on the podcast before I've had Jeff, the sales guy from Nomi on talking about positioning. If you guys are interested in getting a Nomi highchair, actually have a really significant discount. I'm not allowed to mention the particulars of it on a podcast, but you can email me if you head to the SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE, 181. So BLW podcast.com/181, send me an email and I'll send you the details of that Nomi high chair.

Katie Ferraro (4m 18s):

If you want to get this chair that you can pull your baby right up to the table for Thanksgiving. Cause that's a huge part of Baby Led. Weaning is being able to participate in meals with our babies. And I love that hiker because of it. The fluidly adjusting foot plate, right? Babies need to be able to put their feet flat on a solid foot plate. And the Nomi is the only highchair that adjusts at every single level that your baby's foot is at so that your baby can have a safe swallow, no matter where they are in their feeding journey. Now you've got that baby up at the table. What foods are you going to feed? I'm going to share some of my favorite picks for Thanksgiving and then the ones I pass on because to be honest, we generally don't offer baby more than three foods at one time. You're welcome to do more or less if you want to. But sometimes I see these plates with tons of different types of foods, a super overwhelming for the parents who has time to make five different types of food at every single meal and super overwhelming for the baby.

Katie Ferraro (5m 4s):

Okay. So I generally do. I use the easy peasy. Mini mat when I'm making a meal for baby there's two, two ounce portions and a four ounce portion in that suction mat, that two ounce portion, I'll put a small portion of protein and a serving of fruit or vegetable. And then in the larger four ounce portion, which is like the smile part. So it's like two eyes and a smile in the smile part. I'll put the carbohydrate or whatever the starchy food is that I'm feeding the baby. And I teach more about this inside of my weekly workshop. Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. You can sign up for that at BabyLedWeaning.co That's where I gave everyone my hundred first foods list. I'll teach you my five step feeding framework. So you can learn how to offer five new foods a week to Your Baby. And I show you how to plate baby's food so that you're re-introducing baby to familiar foods that you've already tried, but you're still trying one new food a day.

Katie Ferraro (5m 52s):

And that workshop again, it's at BabyLedWeaning.co and everyone on the workshop gets a copy of my hundred first foods list. And if you guys are interested in that ezpz mat that I was recommending, I am an affiliate for ezpz my discount code, KATIE10 works for 10% off site-wide at ezpzfun.com. And that mini-map which suctions to the table is great to have when your baby is starting to join you in family meals reminds you to offer a variety of foods. Again, we put a little portion of protein, a little portion of fruit or vegetable and a starchy food. So we're talking about the protein. I do love Turkey for Baby Led Weaning. Again, we've been doing a ton of meat content lately, but when it comes to selecting meats that we offer our baby, we want to choose the fattier cuts of meat.

Katie Ferraro (6m 33s):

So I like the legs and the wing and the thigh meat for babies. And I kind of stay away from the breath because it tends to be more dry and dry foods, particularly dry protein foods can be a choking hazard. I don't do gravy for babies unless I'm the one making the gravy. I make my own gravy because my mom and I are both not like amazing cooks. We're both dietitians. We like kind of cook out of necessity that my mom makes amazing gravy and she taught me how to make amazing gravy. I just don't put any salt. I like take the portion out for the baby before I felt it for everyone else. And you can make a low sodium gravy. It definitely does not taste as good as regular gravy, but you can just withhold the sodium if you're actually making your gravy. And then also put that on the meat for baby, if you want to. So I pick the Turkey, but I pass on the ham.

Katie Ferraro (7m 15s):

Okay. Hams are really high sodium food. There are much safer ways to make pork for Baby Led Weaning than by offering ham. So check out episode 175, that's all about pork and how to safely prepare pork for Baby Led Weaning. We'll give you some more ideas about why we pass on the ham at least for Thanksgiving, but stick to the Turkey. Pick the Turkey, pass on the hand. What about the vegetables? Okay. I know a lot of people love like the green bean casserole and there's lots of different ways to make green bean casserole. I have a love hate relationship with green beans when it comes to Baby Led Weaning, Hey, I like my own green beans personally like fresh green beans to be somewhat crispy and to snap. Okay. That's not safe for babies. We don't offer any crispy or crunchy or foods that snap because it's not safe for babies to eat.

Katie Ferraro (7m 57s):

So if you've got green beans, you got to cook them until they're kind of soggy, which is gross. Pull out the adult portion and then cook the baby portion till it's nice and soft. That's safer for babies to swallow, but if you're doing a green bean casserole and it's got a bunch of like canned mushroom soup in it, that's not the best bet for baby because there is so much sodium. So I'll pass on the green beans, but I pick the roasted vegetables. Okay. If you've got roasted carrots or roasted parsnips or roasted Brussels sprouts, as long as they're nice and soft, especially the carrots and the parsnips. Those are so easy to cut into those strips that are about the size of your adult pinky finger. Okay? And that little portion pocket of the mini mat that you put one serving of fruit or vegetable in there, you could put some roasted veggies in there just without added salt.

Katie Ferraro (8m 39s):

Now, when it comes to the carbohydrate food, everyone loves mashed potatoes. At Thanksgiving time, I love mashed potatoes, but they're such a pain to make. There's so much work. My kids think they're like a special occasion food cause I never make them. And I love them with a lot of butter. So if your baby has had or been exposed to cow's milk protein, and you make your mashed with butter, awesome. Give them all the mashed potatoes in the world. Just pull the portion out for the baby before you put the salt in them, right? Because depending upon how you make it, your mashed potatoes, they could be super duper salty. But the mashed potatoes is actually a nice way to soften up some of the Turkey. If your Turkey, I mean, again, we want to be choosing the darker meat, but if you've got some Turkey, it's a little on the drier side, we always can add some dippers or some toppers. I love mashed potatoes as a topper. It's a good source of carbohydrate for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (9m 20s):

Hey, now some people make yams or candied yams. I would pass on those interesting fun fact, what Americans think our yams are really not yam. We only have sweet potatoes in the United States, yellow sweet potatoes or white sweet potatoes are both wonderful for babies. But my husband, the only thing he cooks all year long, that's not meat is at Thanksgiving time. He makes the Ruth's Chris sweet potato casserole. I do not love this one. It's basically like pie. There's so much sugar in it. It's unbelievable. Everyone else loves it when he makes it. Cause it's basically dessert. That is not a food that I would feed the baby. So I'm going to pass on the sweet potato casserole because of all the added sugar, also marshmallows, huge chambers for babies. And I'm going to pick the mashed potatoes for babies.

Katie Ferraro (9m 59s):

Another one I pass on is cranberry sauce. I like love cranberries and berries, but there is literally no way to make a cranberries palatable that does not involve a lot of sugar. And if you guys have figured out how to do it, okay, also you can't. I did this a while ago. So whatever your recipe and it was full of Splenda, I was like, okay, technically that's not sugar, but like we also don't offer artificial sweeteners to babies. So if you have a way to make cranberries soft and not like the most hard thing that nobody would ever put in their mouth without adding sugar, I would love to hear it. But for the most part, cranberry sauce either has too much added sugar or literally not palatable because it doesn't have any sugar. So we got to stay away from added sugar and added salt. When we're feeding our babies, then obviously everyone finishes their Thanksgiving with some sort of a dessert.

Katie Ferraro (10m 41s):

Hey, I'm a big fan of if your baby eats a bite or two, a dessert, it's not the end of the world. Is this something you're going to regularly feed your baby? No, but I think it is important that if you're incorporating Your Baby into your family mealtime and you're having a special meal and you want to offer baby a little bit of a special food, Hey, as long as it's safe and they're not going to choke on it, I say, you go for it. So I hope you guys have a very, very happy Thanksgiving. And again, thank you so much for being a part of this wonderful Baby Led Weaning community. I'll catch you next time. Bye now.