Make Slippery Foods Easier to Pick Up (+ Add Iron) with these 5 Ingredient Hacks

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Katie Ferraro (1m 3s):

And if you're using Wheat germ as a dry coating, like not cooked, just when you're at the store, just make sure that it says toasted or stabilized Wheat germ. That basically means it's been heat treated by the manufacturer. So it's the same principle here for Wheat germ as it is for wheat brand, that this is a perfectly safe food to offer to your baby. You can toast it if you want. It kind of brings out this like nuttier flavor, but provided that you're buying those store-bought toasted or stabilized products, they're perfectly safe to go and roll these other slippery foods in even if you don't toast them. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby Led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 44s):

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 a confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Ever noticed how your baby can pick up like longer sticks of you know, sweet potato or a hamburger strip, like a probe, but then the second you hand them something kind of slippery like avocado or maybe canned pea or it turns into this like catch me if you can game. Well, here's the thing, slippery foods are not a sign that your baby cannot do baby led weaning. They're just a texture challenge.

Katie Ferraro (2m 25s):

And there's a couple easy ways to make picking up those slippery foods simpler without changing the food wall. Sneaking in something that your baby actually needs a lot of at this stage and that's Iron. So today I'm gonna be sharing five quick Ingredient Hacks. You can roll these slippery foods in that you can use to help increase traction. So you're making it easier for the baby to pick up, but you're also going to increase the amount of Iron that your baby's going to eat. I want you to hang tight because I'm gonna be sharing not only the types of foods that are kind of slippery, that benefit from rolling it in something, but the types of ingredients you can roll those foods in that also have Iron.

Katie Ferraro (3m 5s):

So let's start with why does this matter? I mean, do we really need to be bending over backwards to make sure our babies can pick up every slippery food? And the answer is certainly no. So We don't need to do everything in your power to make your baby's life easier. But sometimes those really super slippery foods, they can be challenging for the early eaters to pick up. And that's because your baby, when they start solid foods, they don't have their pince or grasp, right? That's where they put the food between their forefinger and their thumbs. So they're using their whole hand or their Palmer grasp and it can be kind of challenging to get foods like that into their hands. So I'm talking about the type of slippery foods like canned pears, canned peaches, avocado laces.

Katie Ferraro (3m 45s):

I know we have chayote squash on our hundred First Foods list and sometimes that one, if you make it the right way, it's pretty slippery. Now what sort of ingredients could we roll those foods in? Once you cut 'em to the right size, which is about the size of your adult pinky finger, what would we roll it in to make it easier to increase traction and Iron? So here are five foods I wanna share and they're going in descending Iron count and I basically set this up. So again, portion sizes do not really matter for babies, but the dietician in me when I'm laying out an outline like this for an episode, I gotta do it in, okay, well we need to standardize it. So I'm talking about two tablespoon portions. Again, your baby doesn't have to eat the whole two tablespoons, but that's about what I would spread out.

Katie Ferraro (4m 27s):

I usually take this like I'll put it on a cutting board and kind of make a long line and then I'll roll that slippery food in it just to get some of it to stick to it. So we're gonna start first with Wheat germ. Now Wheat germ, you might be like, wait a minute, I don't have any Wheat germ, but if you have my a hundred First Foods list and you go down to the allergenic food section, Wheat germ is on there because wheat is one of the top nine allergenic foods, those are the nine foods that account for about 90% of food allergy. There's lots of different safe ways you can introduce your baby to wheat. I love Wheat germ. So germ is like the middle part, it's the embryo or the sprouting part of the wheat gr grain, okay? It's that tiny little inner core that can grow into a new plant.

Katie Ferraro (5m 8s):

So you can toast Wheat germ if you want, if you're using it as a dry coating, like not cooked. Generally when you buy it at the store, the store bought is already toasted or stabilized Wheat germ. So it's been like heat treated by the manufacturer and that basically is done to slow the rancidity. 'cause anytime anything has fat in it, it's gonna go rancid or bad. And the middle part of that wheat kernel does have fat in it. So, and that's a good thing, right? 'cause your baby needs fat for still developing brain. If you only have raw Wheat germ, you really don't wanna do this procedure because you really should only be using raw Wheat germ in cooked foods. Okay? So the bottom line, just buy the toasted or stabilized Wheat germ, that's the easiest. It's totally easy to find and use it as like a coating. If you're rolling, like let's say your avocado slices in Wheat germ, if you have a two tablespoon serving of Wheat germ, you're gonna get about two and a half milligrams of Iron.

Katie Ferraro (5m 55s):

And again, I don't want you counting your milligrams of Iron, but my general rule of thumb is if you are looking at the food labels of the foods you're offering your baby, if you see something that says one milligram of Iron, I call that in Iron food, it's pretty high in Iron. Again, your baby's not gonna eat the whole portion, the amount listed as foreign adult portion. I did a whole episode in episode 1 69, it's called Iron. Does My Baby really need to eat 11 milligrams of Iron a day? And we talk about a lot of the nuances of like Iron labeling and how much Iron does my baby really need? And again, don't get bogged down in the numbers, but around one milligram of Iron a couple of times a day. That's great if you're offering those Iron containing foods to your baby, especially if you're, you know, skipping the Iron fortified cereals, which most parents and baby Led weaning are going to be doing.

Katie Ferraro (6m 41s):

So check out Wheat germ. If you have the hundred First Foods list, it's on the bottom row and parents are sometimes like, what do I do with the Wheat germ? We've got lots of recipes inside of my baby Led weaning program that's called Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro for all of the hundred FIRST FOODS. We have recipes for your different ages and stages of baby led weaning. So if you wanna cook with Wheat germ, you're welcome to do it, but you can also just roll those slippery foods in it. And if you don't yet have my hundred FIRST FOODS list, I give it away to everybody for free on my free online masterclass. It's called Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. This is a one hour video training that I show you exactly how to prep all the foods safely. You can sign up to take that right now, later today, tomorrow when your baby naps.

Katie Ferraro (7m 22s):

Head to baby led weaning dot co slash masterclass and get signed up. Get that free hundred First Foods list, put it on your fridge, start checking the foods off. And if you haven't done wheat as an allergenic food yet, definitely check out Wheat germ. So that's the first way that you can potentially reduce the slipperiness or increase the traction and also add a little bit of Iron for your baby as well. Number two is Wheat bran. Now wheat brand is different from Wheat germ because Wheat bran is the outer or the protective layer of the wheat kernel. So there's a lot more fiber in Wheat bran compared to Wheat germ, but there's also some minerals in there and a little bit of Iron as well. Slightly less Iron than in Wheat germ, but still like it's kinda got like more of a dryer coarser, like more saw dusty texture.

Katie Ferraro (8m 8s):

So it adds bulk and grit to some of your baked goods. You do not have to toast Wheat bran at home if you're using it as a dry coating. Again, same kind of cautious guidance. You wanna buy a product that's heat treated or stabilized by the manufacturer, which if you're shopping at a typical grocery store, the wheat brand that you're gonna buy is there. So you spread it out on the cutting board. You take your, if you're doing canned pears or canned peaches, again, just make sure you're looking for those that have no added sugar. Cut 'em into pieces about the size of your adult pinky finger, make sure they're soft and pass the squish test, roll 'em in that wheat brand. A slightly less Iron than Wheat germ, but still a great option.

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Katie Ferraro (10m 33s):

The next one going down the list. Maybe not something you think of to use as an ingredient when you're starting solid foods, but infant formula. If your baby's been on formula or had formula, you know it's fortified with Iron and you can actually use it. We're gonna use formula if you already have it in the house, no reason to go out and buy it if you're exclusively breastfeeding. But if you've Got it laying around one or two tablespoons spread out, that's a food your baby's already you know, you know has been exposed to. There's cow's milk protein in there, but you know your baby's had that numerous times and they're not allergic to the cow's milk protein, take advantage of the Iron that's in there. In a two tablespoon serving, you're getting about one and a half milligrams of Iron. Again, that's if your baby eats it all.

Katie Ferraro (11m 13s):

It doesn't really matter if they eat it all, but you can use that as a food to increase the traction and Iron for your baby as well. Alright, fourth up on the list is flax seed meal. So Flaxseed meal is ground flaxseed. It's basically flax seeds that have been milled into like a fine sand like powder. So sometimes it's labeled different things you'll see like Flaxseed meal or flax meal or milled flax. It's basically those are all the same thing, but those are different than whole flax seeds. So whole flax seeds we don't do for babies, okay? 'cause they can pass through the gut without breaking down much once you grind it up into ground flax seed or flax meal or milled flax.

Katie Ferraro (11m 53s):

Again, those are all the same things when you grind it up. It does get digestible. It's like more easily digested by the gut, but it does also go rancid faster. So you do need to keep it sealed in the refrigerator. I do not have flaxseed on my hundred First Foods list. Like there came a point where I just had to stop adding things to the list. I did do a whole episode, episode 2 73 of the podcast called Chia or Flaxseed, which one is better for babies or kind of breakdown from a nutritional and a digestibility standpoint, chia and flaxseed. So if you wanna check that out, that's episode 2 7 3. All right, so that's the fourth one. Now the fifth item, this is the lowest Iron food of the five that I'm mentioning in today's episode.

Katie Ferraro (12m 37s):

But don't sleep on Panko. So Panko are Japanese style breadcrumbs and if you are in my program or you follow any of my content, you're like, oh my god, Katie Ferraro iss obsessed with Panko. I am because I love Panko breadcrumbs. They are much lower in sodium than traditional or Italian style breadcrumbs. We use Panko a lot for making fritters. So fritters are little fried cakes, which is how we make a lot of the different whole grains from the hundred First Foods list to kind of hold everything together. The fritter recipes in my program, we were just looking and doing some data on which of the recipes are the most frequently downloaded in our program. And the fritter recipes are always at the top and they use a lot of Panko.

Katie Ferraro (13m 19s):

So Panko does contain wheat. So you wanna make sure your baby's already been exposed to wheat a number of times on its own without reaction before trying this. Panko is generally like ready to eat. You can use it as a dry coating on those slippery foods without having to cook it again. You just wanna make sure it's like typically commercially packaged Panko, the kind you'd find at the grocery store. Most of them are quite low in salt. I have in recent years noticed that like Panko is increased in popularity. That's a lot of P words as a result. There's also like a lot of types of seasoned Panko now, which sometimes will have added sodium. So you just wanna check your labels. We're generally looking for less than 100 milligrams of sodium per serving, and that's gonna be much lower than the amount of sodium you're gonna find in traditional breadcrumbs.

Katie Ferraro (14m 2s):

'cause bread foods like commercially prepared bread, it's really high in salt, right? That's why we generally don't offer it to babies. That's why you don't see bread on my hundred First Foods list. But we work Panko into a lot of the different recipes inside of my baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro program. If you are, if you've got your a hundred First Foods list and you're ready to get making all these foods and you want expert guidance on how to move your baby through all of the different texture progression, check out My program BABY Led weaning with Katie Ferraro. I've got a discount code for you where you're either watching or listening to this podcast. If you wanna get 50 bucks off, you can grab that head to baby Led weaning dot co slash program and you can dive right in if you want me to kind of fast track your baby through all of these different foods and textures, I've got a hundred First Foods Daily Meal Plan in there.

Katie Ferraro (14m 51s):

I'll get you to those fritters pretty quickly. I've got 20 weeks of done for you meal plans. Like you literally don't have to think about what food to feed your baby next. 'cause I did all the mental load lifting for you. Again, that's at baby led weaning dot co slash program. But get your Panko on if you haven't already. We wanna use the plain one. Stay away from the ones with added salt or sugar in it. If you're coating really wet foods like, like peaches for example, we do a lot of love canned peaches for baby LED weaning. Go with a light coating of Panko. If you get like really, really heavy, you can get like kind of super gummy and then it can kind of form a bolus that sticks on the roof of your baby's mouth. And we wanna steer clear of that too. So the five foods that we generally do, four, or you can do any five you want, but the ones that I've outlined in today's episode, Wheat germ, Wheat bran, infant formula, Flaxseed meal, and Panko, try those out on foods like canned pears, canned peaches, avocado slices, chite.

Katie Ferraro (15m 46s):

Let me know how it goes. Thank you guys for listening. I'll put the links from today's episode up on the show notes, which you can find@blwpodcast.com slash nine five. I also wanna say a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. We're online@blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. Bye now.

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