BLW Experts Answering Your Frequently Asked Baby-Led Weaning Questions

Katie Ferraro (0s):

Hope to see you guys at The BABY LED WEANING SUMMIT. There's never been an online event like this in the past. It's totally free. And I hope that you'll join me to help make it a success. BLWsummit.com to grab your spot today. 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. Well, Hey guys, Katie here, and I am super excited to tell you about my baby LED WEANING SUMMIT is the BIGGEST baby led weaning event that has ever happened.

Katie Ferraro (48s):

And I want you to be a part of it. Here's what's going on. I've gathered 17 leading feeding experts from around the world who are going to be joining me in this free online event called the baby led weaning summit. The summit is going to take place from October 18th until the 23rd. And it's six jam packed days of baby led weaning trainings, events exclusive offers giveaways. Basically it's just an online baby led weaning party, but we're going to be sharing infant feeding best practices. So registration for the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT is going on right now. It's totally free to attend and you can sign up at BLWsummit.com.

Katie Ferraro (1m 28s):

I'm putting the summit on to showcase the wide array of work that my fellow feeding expert colleagues are doing around the world. And so that we can all learn the latest research and up-to-date guidance for giving our babies a safe start to solid foods with baby led weaning. I know when you guys are trying to figure out baby led weaning that it can be confusing and parents are way too often getting conflicting, outdated, and even dangerous information about starting solid foods from non-credentialed unreliable sources. So I'm putting the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT together where I've invited 17 credentialed feeding experts to share their knowledge and expertise to help ease the transition to solid foods for you and your baby.

Katie Ferraro (2m 12s):

And my only request is that if each of you who are listening right now, could please tell two friends about the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. That would mean the world to me. Hope to see you guys at The BABY LED WEANING SUMMIT. There's never been an online event like this in the past. It's totally free. And I hope that you'll join me to help make it a success. BLWsummit.com to grab your spot today. So for today's episode, I'm bringing on some of the experts who are going to be presenting at my baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. And they're going to be answering some of your most frequently asked baby led weaning questions. Okay. First up is a question about baby food. If babies don't need to eat baby food, then why are there so many baby food products available for sale?

Katie Ferraro (2m 54s):

I love this question and I'm so excited that one of our BLW summit presenters just happens to be Marion Nestle. And she's going to answer that for you. Now. Marion is probably the most esteemed and noteworthy nutrition academic in the United States. She's the author of the food politics blog, the food politics book and Marion Nestle's going to be at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT to present on the topic of marketing commercial, baby food. So let's hear a little bit about Marion's take on baby food marketing.

Marion Nestle (3m 21s):

Here's the problem for food manufacturers. You have to understand that if you're a baby food manufacturer, you've got a real problem. There are only a limited number of babies in the United States. It's three or 4 million born every year and that's all. And they only need these kinds of foods for a short period of time. Where's your market. And so the manufacturers are doing absolutely everything that they can to extend their market. In one way to extend the market is to convince parents that babies can't eat regular food. They need to eat special foods made for them in packages with cartoons on them or pretty Babies on them or something on them.

Marion Nestle (4m 5s):

That's going to keep them healthy. And none of that is true. It's about marketing.

Katie Ferraro (4m 10s):

I love that. And side note, I've been obsessed with Marion Nestle's works and she spent a semester at UC Berkeley when I was doing my master's work there. And she is so gracious with her time. And I'm so excited that she's going to be joining us at The BABY LED WEANING SUMMIT. If you are a Marion fan too, and you also happen to be interested in baby feeding her presentation, not to be missed again, the site is BLWsummit.com to register. So you don't miss her presentation are to gut lots more baby food related questions from you guys. I heard a few parents asking about white rice cereal. So Taran Santa's question. My pediatrician is encouraging us to start with rice cereal and my baby is only four months old. What should I do? Well, the white rice cereal guy to talk to is Dr.

Katie Ferraro (4m 52s):

Alan Greene. He's the pediatrician known for starting the white out movement, which is an undertaking to get pediatricians to stop recommending white rice cereal. As a first food, Dr. Greene will be speaking about the whiteout movement at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. So I want to let him answer a little bit about white rice cereal.

Dr. Alan Greene (5m 10s):

When you look at the data, the obesity epidemic starts way before school age by the time kids are nine months old, about 30% of the kids in the U S have excess fat cells and alternate capitalism's. So you have to start before that if you're gonna make a big impact. And so looking at that, I looked and found that the number one source of solid food calories in American kids for decades when this obesity epidemic was building was ultra processed white rice cereal. And there was zero good reason for it. We are hard wired, babies love anything that's sweet right out of the gate. They love anything that's salty right out of the gate, but anything that's bitter. They tend to distrust the first several times that they try it.

Dr. Alan Greene (5m 54s):

And that makes sense because in nature, bitter things might be toxic and you wouldn't want them to pick up something off the ground and eat. It tastes good right away if it was as bitter, but things that they get on average six to 10 times, what's restarted solid foods. It can happen actually before that, during breastfeeding and in utero as well. But those are the things that once they have six to 10 times, that they're going to then fall in love with, because it becomes safe in their brains. And same with anything sour like most fruits. So most vegetables, most fruits, they're not going to like at the beginning, unless mom had often during pregnancy or during breastfeeding, otherwise it takes six to 10 times. Most American parents will give up a food after two or three times and say, oh, they don't like broccoli.

Dr. Alan Greene (6m 35s):

They don't like peas. Let's give up. The one exception to that is processed white flour. They get it again. And again, and again, and again, often for two weeks at a time,

Katie Ferraro (6m 44s):

Dr. Greene is one of my favorites. He's going to be presenting more in depth on this topic during day three of the summit. So be on the lookout for Dr. Alan Greene in his white out movement. So you can learn more about the pitfalls and drawbacks about white rice cereal, because there's better bets for iron foods out there. Now it's not just doctors that we learned from when it comes to infant feeding. We have some other major Experts aligned up from different disciplines, and we absolutely had to have Marsha Dunn Klein present at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. When ever parents ask about how they should interact with their baby at meal times and get ready for this transition to solid foods without causing stress and anxiety. Marsha literally wrote the book on pre feeding skills and GTT is a ton about managing anxiety around meal times with your baby.

Katie Ferraro (7m 29s):

So I want to share just a little snippet of advice from another baby LED WEANING SUMMIT, presenter, Marsha Dunn Klein.

Marsha Dunn Klein (7m 36s):

One of the best things I say to parents is offered again, offered in a safe way, try it in a different way, but make sure you're offering that food with the intent that it's an offer, not a demand, because one of the things that I will tell you, I believe gets so far in the way of good eating for children is that somehow that balance gets disrupted and it feels like a demand to a child inadvertently. We didn't mean it as grownups, but it can feel like demand and pressure. And so those of you who know me know, I talk about a positive tilt when a parent offers and the baby says, yes, that would be terrific.

Marsha Dunn Klein (8m 16s):

And they've reached for that board. And they come together at the food. That's a positive tilt, but sometimes the parents offer the food and the child is trying to get out of the high chair and feeling pressured and feeling like there's some demand on them that they didn't understand. That's a negative tilt.

Katie Ferraro (8m 31s):

I am so excited that Marsha will be one of our feeding experts, speakers at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. If you're in the feeding therapy world, you're certainly aware of Marcia's iconic body of work. She's going to be presenting on her, get permission approach, relation based support in infant feeding. So head to BLW summit.com and make sure you get registered so you can get this amazing training for free from Marsha Dunn Klein. All right, let's move on to some Food questions because you know, learning what baby led weaning is or why it's a good idea is one thing, but how to actually do it is another. And so when it comes to cooking foods, we want to do everything possible to help reduce choking risk for our babies at mealtimes, right? And adding sauces is one way that we can add moisture to baby led weaning foods that can reduce choking risk.

Katie Ferraro (9m 15s):

So another one of our baby LED WEANING SUMMIT presenters is the cookbook author from Ireland. Her name is Aileen Cox Blundell. And she's going to take this question about sausage

Aileen Cox Blundell (9m 25s):

Because you're not using salt in your baby's food ever. So I would never put salt into baby food, but what I would do is always make sure you're seasoning with like really nice fresh herbs, fresh herbs are amazing. And they're also really nutritious as well. So it's a really good way of adding lots of flavor in without adding in lots of salt. I love that or tomato based sauce, you could do tomato based sauce as well, and like a reduced smarter sauce. The longer you leave the lid off the pan and the steam reduces from your sauce mixture and evaporates, your sauce will start to take an up. You can use an unsalted tomato puree, or you can also make a white, cheesy sauce as well, which is really nice.

Aileen Cox Blundell (10m 7s):

It's Massey, but like you have to embrace the mass. I think when it comes to baby led weaning anyway, so you're in this, you have to do it, like get a bib that you can wipe your baby down and don't be worrying about sauce because it's a great way of getting lots of goodness into your kids. I think

Katie Ferraro (10m 24s):

If you haven't heard Aileen present before, she's absolutely lovely. She's going to be at the BLW summit presenting on some simple starter recipe ideas for baby led weaning. All right. What about this question from Ronda? She's a mom of Baby scout aged six months and she said, is it okay to put seasoning or spices on BLW foods for my baby great questions? And 100% Babies do not have to eat bland food. In fact, there are tons of benefits to adding seasoning and spice, and I'm going to let my feeding friend and colleague Kanchan Koya take this one. Content is known on social as chief spice mama. She's the author of the cookbook spice spice baby. She has a PhD in molecular biology from Harvard yet.

Katie Ferraro (11m 5s):

She makes the whole teaching about spice and stuff. So interesting and so relatable. And she shares a ton about the benefits of why we want to add seasoning for our babies. So here's a little snippet from Kanchan Koya

Kanchan Koya (11m 19s):

For a long time. We have been led to believe really for no good scientific reason that Babies should be given bland food. And we should kind of introduce flavors slowly. And really, she said, you know, this was 2012 when he was born that at this point, all those assumptions have been debunked. It's really about flavor from day one. It's about exposure and building an adventurous palate, expanding their flavor horizons, and recognizing, like you said, that cultures around the world have been doing this for centuries. They're so packed with something we call, you know, phytochemicals or phytonutrients, which is just fancy speak for plant based nutrition. So spices come from the plant kingdom.

Kanchan Koya (12m 0s):

They are often the dried seeds or root or bark or even leaves of plants. And as we know, these plants have compounds, phytochemicals, polyphenols, all these incredible compounds that confer a range of benefits in our bodies. And, you know, people often wonder, well, does it really matter? Cause you're only using a sprinkling here and a sprinkling there. And the research shows it does add up and these phytochemicals are powerful even at small doses. And especially when you're thinking about health maintenance or building health or preventing disease, even small amounts become really, really powerful and beneficial. So definitely obsessed with the health benefits.

Kanchan Koya (12m 41s):

And when I think of health benefits of spaces, the first thing that comes to mind is really inflammation management.

Katie Ferraro (12m 48s):

These are a little shy about spicing and seasoning your baby's food. You are going to love Kanchen's presentation. She's at The BABY LED WEANING SUMMIT, and she's going to be teaching us about how to flavor season and spice your baby's food. We're also going to be giving away a couple of her books. We're giving away a ton of stuff on this summit. We're going to have fun. In addition to learning about baby led weaning from 17 of the leading feeding experts from around the world. Again, the site is BLW summit.com get signed up, get registered and starting on October 18th, we're going to be hitting you hard with all of the best baby led weaning training. And again, it's totally free. All right. What about babies who are a little bit on the smaller size? A triplet friend of mine Lorena was asking about starting solid foods for her smaller babies.

Katie Ferraro (13m 32s):

And I get so excited for the multiple moms and, but she said my babies were born premature and they've always been on the small end. Our pediatrician says to start solid foods early so they can have some catch-up weight. But how do I know how early? Okay. I love this question because growth charts can be scary and they can be easily misinterpreted and nobody wants their baby to fall off the growth chart or like not be gaining the right amount of weight for their age and their stage. So whenever I have a growth chart or a weight gain question, I always lean on my friend and super smart PhD, pediatric Dietitian colleague Rosan Meyer to help answer. So here's what Rosan has to say about

Rosan Meyer (14m 8s):

Great filtering and failure to thrive are interchangeable. What you'll see is that within Europe, we use more growth faltering in the us. It's more failure to thrive. And the reason we've moved away from failure to thrive within Europe and in particular in the UK is that failure to thrive, implies that there's a failure from a parenting perspective. And we felt that that terminology failure is not a positive terminology. So we've really switched away from using a failure to thrive to growth faltering, but actually they are interchangeable growth, faltering or failure to thrive. Or we explain to parents is the journey downwards. Okay. So that means you have your growth charts and your pediatrician or your dietician is supposed to, as you, your child grows tracky on yours growth charts.

Rosan Meyer (14m 54s):

And the crossing downwards in terms of centers is when you have growth faltering catch-up growth in order to understand that you actually have to understand what does normal growth for that individual child. Okay. So first of all, is that you have normal growth and normal growth. And I always say this to parents, every child will drop over the course of the first two, three years of life. They will have periods where the weight or the length drops that is actually normal. Although a central line looks very smooth. When you look at the raw data, you will see kind of goes up and down. So if we're saying that catch up, then you need to say, what do you catch up to?

Rosan Meyer (15m 40s):

So what is normal for that child? Now, a lot of parents say to me, but what is normal for that child? You cannot make an assessment of what is normal based on weight. Only you have to take length and length is done up to two years of age and then its height and head circumference as well. You don't need to do catch-up if you've not got a faltering growth or failure to thrive, if you've come to me and saying, Roseanne, the weight is just dropped slightly, then I would say to you, all we need to do is we monitor you now because what I really am concerned about, and I'm sure Katie you're aware of is this pressure on catch up and pushing nutrients. And when the child actually does not need it metabolically, we know that if a child then becomes overweight at an early stage, it actually predisposes them to syndrome X and later life obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease.

Rosan Meyer (16m 32s):

So my advice to parents is when somebody gives you advice and say, you need to catch up. The question is first going to be, why are you asking me to do this? Show me on the growth chart and tell me where my child needs to be. Because if it's just a central line drop, then I would say to you, I would rather say let's monitor and weigh in a time measure in a months time again. And monitor. Second question is going to be, is it actually appropriate for me to catch up? Now,

Katie Ferraro (16m 59s):

Rosan is going to be presenting on day six of the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. And her talk is entitled to catch up. Wait, baby led weaning for underweight babies. Again, you can sign up at BLW summit.com and we're going to be asking all of the parents on that day to bring their babies growth charts to the training so that we can plot our own babies and learn some of the most common mistakes when it comes to interpreting how your baby is growing and then how that affects your feelings about solid foods. Because a lot of it is tied together and we don't want people feeling like they need to be starting things early. When in fact it's not really safe. So, all right, so we could ask and answer questions all day long, but before we go, I want to make sure we get an answer in from our keynote speaker at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT.

Katie Ferraro (17m 40s):

That's going to be Gill Rapley. Now Gill Rapley is the founding philosopher of the baby led weaning movement. She does not like to be called the inventor of baby led weaning. So I think already made that mistake, but I try not to say it, but you guys know her. She's the co-author of the original baby led weaning books. She's been on the podcast numerous times and there's no one else who could even come close to keynoting. A baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. Like she can because she's a lady who started it all. So Jill is going to be breaking apart. Some of the most common myths about baby led weaning in her keynote address at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. So I want to let Gill do a little BLW myth busting here to get you guys familiarized with one of her main areas of concern. And that's making sure that baby is really ready to start solid foods.

Katie Ferraro (18m 23s):

And that we wait until the baby is six months of age. That's paramount to success in baby led weaning. So parents ask all the time about the tongue thrust reflex and how do you know if it's gone? And what do you look for? And I think Gill's answer is going to surprise a few of you who might be worried about what's also called the extrusion reflex. As you're going to analyze your baby's ability to start solid foods.

Gill Rapley (18m 44s):

The typical Baby, there is no issue to about a song fast at six months, it's gone, it's been and gone. And so there's no need to complicate things with that. The other reason that that one worries me is because we have to test for it and she say, and how can we do that? Except by putting food into a baby's mouth. Well, maybe doing says, you don't need to do that. You shouldn't be doing that. So the test itself is at all it's the testing is ultimate. Baby led weaning. The other thing that accompanies that in the UK, anyways, that the baby needs to be able to swallow the food. Otherwise they're not ready, not ready for wat. There are plenty of babies who are absolutely ready to start handling food, pick it up, munch on it, throw it around, you know, squishy and whatever that I'm certainly ready to do that.

Gill Rapley (19m 30s):

And when they're ready to swallow it, they will swallow it. We don't have to test for that before we allow them to play with it. We don't have to test that a child can pass grade four piano sound before we let them play on the keys. You know, it's all around the parents being in control that, that mindset. And we need to get rid of that babies of around four months themed to do better on fruits and vegetables, and then gradually work up to including meat and eggs and, and so on probably from around about six months. So the, the, the legacy that we're left with is that somehow meat and fish and eggs and protein foods shouldn't be introduced until two months after they started solids. When actually it wasn't anything to do with the timing of starting.

Gill Rapley (20m 12s):

It was to do with the age of the baby at six months, the most likely nutrients babies are going to be short of if any, are iron and think, and those are found most fancifully in proteins of animal origin. So meat, fish, eggs, so on, but also in lentils and pulses and other vegetarian foods. So those should be the ones that we focus on. And anecdotally, I hear often from parents that those are the foods that children seem to gravitate towards in the early weeks of baby led weaning and not particularly the vegetables and certainly not the fruits. All

Katie Ferraro (20m 48s):

Right, well, we're going to be answering a ton more of your baby Led Weaning Questions at the upcoming baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. Again, it's taking place October 18th to the 23rd of 2021. This is a one-time free event. It's online. You're going to get each day's presentations. The exclusive offers the advanced trainings. It's all FOR FREE delivered, right to your inbox each morning of the summit, but you have to sign up to get the free training. So head to BLWsummit.com. And if you're hanging out with friends or you have family members who are just like going crazy over your baby, crushing it with baby led weaning, please do me a favor and tell two people about the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. I would greatly appreciate because your word of mouth recommendations, being everything, and you are the best advocates for baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (21m 31s):

Thank you guys so much for listening and hope to see you at the baby LED WEANING SUMMIT. Bye now,