Pasta: How to Make Pasta Safe for Babies to Eat

Katie Ferraro (1m 59s):

And when parents ask about using chickpea Pasta for early eaters, if you're going to try to introduce your baby to the potentially allergenic food wheat chickpea Pasta is not going to cut it because that Pasta is made from chickpeas and not flour. And I don't love chickpea Pasta for early eaters because it has very high levels of protein and fiber. And these are two components of foods. They're used by manufacturers in adult foods to help you feel fuller for longer. And I don't wanna make your baby feel artificially full by pumping them full fiber and protein. So If, you wanna use Pasta to introduce your baby to wheat. I suggest you choose regular wheat based Pasta and then save that chickpea stuff for yourself.

Katie Ferraro (2m 39s):

Hey There, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in babyled weaning here on the BabyLed weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using babyled Weaning. Well, hello there. In this episode we're going to talk about Pasta and How to Make Pasta Safe for Babies to Eat. Now pasta is my preferred way to introduce your baby to the potentially allergenic food wheat. Right? There are nine allergenic foods that account for about 90% of food Allergy in North America and wheat is one of them.

Katie Ferraro (3m 24s):

And we wanna introduce those allergenic foods to your baby early and often. So Pasta is a very straightforward starter food that your baby can begin eating as early as six months of age when they are also showing the other reliable signs of readiness to eat. Now I like to start these mini babyled Weaning solo training episodes out with a tip of the day. And today's tip is when it comes to making pasta for Babies, don't salt the cooking water. Now, depending on how you grew up, this might sound like heresy. I know from my Italian friends, they salt the Heck out of their Pasta cooking water. From our 10th anniversary, my husband and I went to Sicily with my best friend and her husband.

Katie Ferraro (4m 6s):

She planned the whole trip. We just kind of hopped along and we took this cooking class, the amount of salt that the lady who taught the class put in the water. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm definitely not putting enough salt in my water. And that's fine for you as an adult, but for Babies, ultimately we are trying to avoid excess salt. So we want your baby to learn how to taste the food and not the salt. So even if the pasta that you're preparing on the package says to salt the cooking water, ignore those directions. Just boil your baby's pasta in good old fashioned water without the salt and hang tight because in this episode I'm gonna be sharing my favorite shapes of Pasta for babyled Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (4m 47s):

These are the ones you're going to want to choose so that your baby can safely self-feed pasta beginning at six months of age. Alright, quick story about feeding Babies Pasta. I remember the first time I gave my quadruplet Babies Pasta. They were seven and a half months old, so that was just around the six month adjusted age for them. They were born six weeks premature. It's one of the first foods that we did. We were just starting led weaning. I had literally no idea what I was doing. So I did penne pasta, but I totally messed up and I cooked it the way that I like pasta, which is al dente. So al dente means to the tooth in Italian, and it's when there's still like a little bit of bite left in the pasta.

Katie Ferraro (5m 28s):

And I learned the hard way that al dente is definitely not soft enough for Babies. So I remember my oldest quadruplet boy, he was trying to eat this piece of penne. It was not soft enough. He was gagging like crazy on it. At one point I thought he was actually choking, freaking out inside, but trying to maintain like a cool exterior. So he didn't see me freaking out. I didn't want to turn his gag into a choke. All of a sudden, this like huge piece of penne pasta just comes shooting out of his mouth. So I started breathing again. He picked that piece of pasta back up, put it back in his mouth, resumed trying to learn how to eat it. But I learned my lesson there watching him gag unnecessarily hard that al dente pasta is not done enough.

Katie Ferraro (6m 8s):

And so when it comes to cooking Pasta for Babies, I recommend cooking it past the al dente face. It's kind of gross. It's like almost. so you and I would probably not want to eat our pasta that way, but it is soft enough for early eaters and it's safe too. so you could always pull out the pasta that you want for yourself when it's cooked to the al dente stage if you're gonna eat Pasta with your baby, and then just let it go a little bit longer so it gets softer and safer for your baby to eat. So what type of pasta do we choose for babyled Weenie when it comes to pasta, yes, of course you can make your own pasta, but I personally feel that already prepared. Pasta is a wonderful convenience food If, you don't have time to make your own pasta or you're not interested in doing that.

Katie Ferraro (6m 51s):

Look for Pasta where the only ingredients are semolina or durum wheat flour. Now, semolina flour is a type of durum wheat flour used in making pasta and semolina flour is high in protein and gluten, which is important for helping pasta stick together. So, there are egg noodles out there too, as you know, pasta that has semolina flour plus egg. And because egg is another one of the big nine potentially allergenic foods, I don't like to use egg noodles to introduce your baby to wheat, right? We don't typically do two new allergenic foods for the first time at the same time. 'cause if your baby had a reaction to one of those, it would be hard to discern whether it was from the egg or whether it was from the wheat. So technically speaking though, if your baby has already had egg a number of times on its own without reaction, then for sure you could go and use egg noodle as a way to introduce your baby to wheat.

Katie Ferraro (7m 40s):

I just prefer to stick to Pasta where the ingredient list includes only Selina and or derham wheat flour. What about whole wheat pasta? If your family usually eats whole wheat Pasta and that's what you wanna offer to your baby? Technically you can, but please know that whole wheat pastas are typically on the tougher side when it comes to the cooked texture compared to plain old white non whole wheat pastas. Okay? As a dietician, yes, I'm a huge proponent of offering your baby whole grains, right? My 100 FIRST FOODS list has 20 different foods in the starchy food category, many of which are whole grains. But when it comes to pasta, I default to regular white i e non whole wheat pasta because of its softer texture, which when cooked is easier for early eaters to swallow.

Katie Ferraro (8m 26s):

Okay? So yes, it is a refined white grain, but in the larger context of things, if you're offering your baby 20 different types of whole grains, if you're doing the hundred first foods approach and one of them is pasta, that's fine. Okay? We just don't want to get to a point where the only carbohydrate or starchy foods we're offering to your baby are refined white grains. I'm speaking in the larger context, just assuming that you're also going to be offering your baby a variety of whole grains throughout this introduction of solid foods process. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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Katie Ferraro (10m 27s):

What about chickpea pasta? Okay, parents ask about chickpea Pasta. I wanna introduce my baby to pasta, but I'm gonna use chickpea pasta. Well, if you're trying to introduce your baby to the potentially allergenic food wheat, then chickpea pasta isn't gonna cut it because chickpea Pasta is made from chickpeas, not from flour. Okay? Chickpea Pasta is a gluten-free option for people who have celiac disease. Celiac affix about 1% of the population in North America. And while first degree relatives of someone with celiac disease, they have about a one in 10 chance of also having celiac disease. Many families unnecessarily avoid gluten or wheat containing foods, right? Gluten is the protein that we find in wheat and r and barley, okay? For the sake of this conversation, we're talking about introducing your baby to the potentially allergenic food wheat.

Katie Ferraro (11m 10s):

Okay? And we don't have as strong of data about the early introduction of wheat like we do for peanut and egg and milk. But the prevailing recommendations from the world's leading pediatric food Allergy researchers is that we do want to introduce all of the potentially allergenic foods, including wheat, early and often to help prevent, in this case, wheat Allergy down the road. There are no known benefits to withholding wheat from your baby. And sometimes you'll hear things like, oh, Babies can't digest gluten or Babies can't digest grain. Please know that that is not true. I personally don't love chickpea pasta for Babies because it has very high levels of protein and fiber. Okay? These are two components of foods.

Katie Ferraro (11m 51s):

They're oftentimes added to adult diet foods to help adults feel fuller for longer. People who shun carbohydrates If, you look at the advertising materials for the leading brand of chickpea Pasta, they're touting that they have lower levels of carbohydrate and higher levels of protein and fiber, and that's fine for adults, okay? I just don't want to make your baby feel artificially full by pumping them full of high levels of fiber and protein, right? Those components of foods take longer to digest and empty the stomach. I don't want your baby to feel artificially full If. you wanna use pasta to introduce your baby to wheat. Choose regular wheat based pasta and save the chickpea stuff for yourself. Now, what shape a pasta works for? baby-led weaning for baby-led weaning in phase one of my program, Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro, we stick to the longer pieces of food shaped about the size of your adult pinky finger.

Katie Ferraro (12m 40s):

So some of the good shapes of cooked pasta to use are things like rotini or penne or cavatappi. Okay? Those longer finger shaped pieces that your baby who's gonna be using their whole hand or their palmer grass in that first phase of babyland, we need to pick those foods up. I don't do tiny pieces of food, right? We wait until phase two or even phase three if that's when your baby develops their pinch or grass, plus they've had lots of experience eating other foods, then they're safe for smaller pieces of food. So for early eaters in phase one, that's the first eight weeks of babyled Weaning. I'm gonna steer clear of things like macaroni or shells or I also don't do spaghetti now because it's very hard for your baby to pick up, but it's also such a pain to clean up.

Katie Ferraro (13m 23s):

We were doing some polls on threads the other day just talking about your least favorite food to clean up off the floor. And spaghetti is like definitely up there. so you can do that food a little bit later. But I like to stick to rotini or penne or cavatappi or really any shape of pasta that's about the size of your adult pinky finger at when cooked so that your baby can pick it up. Now what about pasta sauces? Parents are always saying, do you have a favorite brand or a recommended brand of pasta sauce? And when it comes to commercial marinara, so tomato sauces that you're gonna buy at the store, they're almost always too high in either sugar or salt. So when it comes to sugar for choosing packaged foods for babies, I always look for zero grams of added sugar. Most commercial pasta sauces will have a fair amount of added sugar So If.

Katie Ferraro (14m 5s):

It's more than zero grams of added sugar. I'm not gonna offer it to my baby on the other side when it comes to sodium, my rule of thumb is that I'm looking for less than a hundred milligrams of sodium per serving. And you are very, very hard pressed to find a commercial or jarred pasta sauce that has less than a hundred milligrams of sodium. Now, zoom out a little bit. The bigger picture is you don't need a pasta sauce. You and I might like putting marinara sauce on our pasta and that's fine, but if this is the first time your baby has had pasta, let's stick to introducing them to the wheat, which is the ingredient that we're testing for, right? We're we're offering wheat a number of times to make sure the baby does not have a wheat Allergy. So what I will use, 'cause you wanna put something on the pasta so it doesn't stick together, right?

Katie Ferraro (14m 46s):

I mentioned how the Pasta is made from semolina or germ flour. It's very high in protein, which means that when you cook it, it actually has a tendency, you've probably seen this with Pasta, it sticks together, right? so you can run your Pasta under running water after you drain it. That can help it not stick together in the immediate future. But once that cools, it's gonna stick together. So we wanna use something. We usually use butter or oil. Now I tend to use oil over butter because butter is a dairy food, which contains cow's milk protein, which is another one of those allergenic foods, right? So I'm trying to remove the other allergenic foods from the situation here and just doing an oil, olive oil or whatever oil you use at your house in order to make the Pasta not stick together, but it's gonna make it a little bit more slippery and that's fine.

Katie Ferraro (15m 27s):

Babies need to learn how to pick up slippery foods as well so you don't technically need a sauce. And keep in mind that most of the sauces that you'll find in the store are gonna be too high in sodium and too high in salt. It is very easy though to make your own no salt, no sugar, pasta sauce, If. You would like to, once you do wheat pasta on its own a number of times you're like, Hey, I wanna mix it up and I wanna start adding some sauce. I have a free feeding guide with five of my favorite low sodium sauces for safe swallowing with baby-led weaning. And one of the sauces in that feeding guide is a no salt or low salt marinara sauce. It's so easy to make. I end up making it a lot of the times, like if for my bigger kids, I run out of a jar of pasta.

Katie Ferraro (16m 9s):

I'm like, this is so easy to make. Why don't I do this more often? It also tastes amazing. So If, you want to Download that free feeding guide called Five Baby-Led Weaning Sauce Safe For Swallowing. They're all on. We just redid our website. So If, you go to baby led weaning dot co. There's a page that's called resources, so https://babyledweaning.co/resources. There's a bunch of free feeding guides on there, and the sauces feeding guide is there for you. You can Download that and make that low sodium marinara sauce for your baby. If. you want to, Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (17m 33s):

So I hope you guys enjoyed learning a little bit how to make Pasta safe for your Babies to eat. Pasta is one of the foods in the potentially allergenic foods category of the 100 FIRST FOODS list. Someone wrote to me the other day and said, Hey, how come pasta is not in your starchy foods category? Well, because pasta contains wheat and wheat is one of the allergenic foods, we move that to the allergenic foods part of the 100 FIRST FOODS list. It is technically a starchy food, though. Pasta is a good source of carbohydrate. There's a little bit of iron in there. It's If. You're doing the white Pasta that's enriched, meaning it's been added back in If. you get to the point where you're doing whole wheat. Pasta whole grains are always natural sources of iron. There's a little bit of protein in there. It's a good source of energy for your baby, and it's an easy way to introduce your baby to the potentially allergenic food wheat.

Katie Ferraro (18m 15s):

If you want to grab the whole a 100 FIRST FOODS list. I give that away to everybody for free on my weekly online video training called Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners. This is a 75 minute video training that you can take any time that works for you. You can take it in a few minutes from now later today, sometime tomorrow, If, you go to https://babyledweaning.co. You'll find information on how to sign up for that free workshop, and I'll give you the hundred FIRST FOODS list and a lot more information about how you can make all of the foods from the 100 FIRST FOODS list safe for your baby to eat. Hope you guys enjoy pasta. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.