Katie Ferraro (0s):

As with all meats, pork represents an interesting and unique texture opportunity for your baby. Plus a little bit of nutrition. Plus there's a different flavor in there and Pork does contain iron. 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, welcome back today. We're going to be talking about Pork and How to Safely Prepare Pork for Baby Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (46s):

So I'm going to give you some ideas on different types of Pork that are easy to make safe for baby led weaning kind of walk you through the different cuts of pork that you might find at a typical grocery store or a butcher. If you have the luxury of going to a butcher. And then I'm also going to let you know which particular cuts of pork that I steer clear of for babies and why. So before we launch into the types of Pork, let's back up and talk about why we would eat pork, who eats pork with who doesn't eat pork from a religious standpoint, people who are Jewish, Muslims, seventh day Adventists, they abstained from eating pork or pig products. Vegans, of course, who don't eat any animal foods, they would also not consume Pork. So those of you, Jewish, Muslim seventh day Adventist vegan, probably not a lot of useful information for you in this episode, but if you do eat pork products in your family and you want to know how to prepare them safely for babies, then I've got some tips for you inside of this episode.

Katie Ferraro (1m 40s):

Now, from a nutrition standpoint, what are the benefits of Pork? Or why would we offer babies? Pork? Okay, well, Pork does contain potassium, which is actually a pretty, relatively good source of potassium. And that's a mineral that your baby's body needs for all sorts of activities, including regulating blood pressure and helping with pumping the hardest that it's an electrolyte. You can get it in lots of other sources. But another thing about Pork is that naturally it's low in sodium. Okay? All meat products are now what we do to them in processing, a lot of times can dramatically alter the sodium content. So we'll get to that, but Pork does contain protein. Babies need a little bit of protein, but I don't want anyone going overboard on feeding a food to a baby. Cause like, oh my gosh, that's so much protein.

Katie Ferraro (2m 21s):

That's not the point. Your baby's going to be eating very small amounts of this, if any, at the beginning. But as with all meats, pork represents an interesting and unique texture opportunity for your baby. Plus a little bit of nutrition. Plus there's a different flavor in there. And Pork does contain iron came and talked a lot about iron on the podcast and the type of iron that we find in animal foods called heme. Iron is more well absorbed by the body than is non-heme iron. The type of iron that comes from plant foods. So how much iron is in the different cuts of meat? We can talk about that. It's really not worth kind of splitting hairs over well. I'm going to pick this Pork cut because it has more iron just know across the board offering animal foods like Pork and a variety of foods, including animal and plant foods is a good way to ensure that your baby will eventually get the nutrition they need from foods.

Katie Ferraro (3m 11s):

But early on in baby led weaning at six and seven, sometimes even eight months of age, depending upon when you started, remember breast milk or formula is still your baby's primary source of nutrition while the baby is learning how to eat. So don't stress too much about the nutrients in there, but that's just a little bit of a background about why you might want to offer Pork. Now there's lots of different types of meats that Babies can eat. I have a hundred first foods list that many of you have in our following. And we have a protein category that has 20 different types of proteins, both animal and plant proteins and Pork is on there. So if you see Pork coming up in your calendar as the new protein food that you're going to introduce this week, this episode, we'll have some ideas on how you can safely Prepare and which types of Pork you should select in order to help your baby have the most success with pork.

Katie Ferraro (3m 56s):

And of course, to minimize Choking risk. If you want to grab my a hundred first foods list, it's available to everyone on my free weekly workshop called Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. That's all about how to get your baby to eat 100 foods before turning one, without you having to spoonfeed purees or buy pouches. And you can sign up for this week's workshop times and grab your own copy of my a hundred first foods list by going to baby led weaning dot C O soap. For those of you coming up on Pork, let's talk about when can Babies start eating Pork? Okay, so babies are safe to start solid foods at around the six month mark plus when they're showing or demonstrating the other reliable signs of readiness to feed. And if you're not super sure about what your baby needs to be able to do before you start solid foods, definitely wait until six months of age or six months adjusted age.

Katie Ferraro (4m 42s):

If your baby was premature and then go back and listen to a way earlier episode is episode number two, and it was called five things your baby should be able to do before starting baby led weaning. But generally when your baby is ready to start, baby led weaning, you can do Pork very early on in baby led weaning. You don't have to wait until they're a certain age to do. It provided that you're offering safe cuts or Safely prepared pieces of Pork for your baby. So let's talk about that. What types of pork can babies eat? Now? There's lots of different cuts of pork. And depending upon where you're located in the world or regionally in the United States, the same cut can be called different things, but the way I'm going to organize this, because there's a lot of Pork things is I'm going to go quickly through the list of pork products that I personally do not feed babies.

Katie Ferraro (5m 28s):

And I'll explain why. And then I'll share with you my three favorite cuts of pork. So it seems like there's a lot of, oh, donate this and donate that. And I, as you guys know, if you follow me or you've listened to the podcast for any length of time, I really like to promote the foods that Babies can eat. And I'm a firm believer that most foods out there, we can make it safe for babies to eat. So when people say, is Pork a safe food for Baby? I say that depends. You know, what cut of pork are we talking about? So don't get put off by the list of pork products that I don't feed the babies. Cause I you'll leave with a couple of good recommendations. You can go right to your store and get it for your baby. So let's start with the cuts of meat that I pass on. As far as Pork goes for babies, starting with bacon, Bacon's kind of an obvious one.

Katie Ferraro (6m 10s):

Okay. A lot of pork products because they're cured, meaning they're treated with a lot of salt. We don't offer to Babies because of the sodium content. Now bacon also can be crispy and crunchy and we generally steer clear of crispy or crunchy foods, especially early on in solid foods. If you're interested in learning more about sodium, then go ahead and check out an earlier episode, episode number 33, it's called salt three easy ways to minimize sodium for your baby. And you can get some good tips in there. So bacon we steer clear of because of the crispy crunchy stuff. Also, there can be some crystal in there and we generally don't offer any grizzly parts of meats to babies sausage, same thing, very high in sodium, but also with regards to sauce that just kind of like hotdogs, if cut in round pieces, it could be a potential choking hazard.

Katie Ferraro (6m 56s):

So while we generally steer clear of processed and cased meat products like sausage and hot dogs because of sodium, if you do serve them, it's not the end of the world. If your baby has some, but you definitely want to be cutting them in match, stick shapes and not into rounds or coin shapes, which could potentially occlude the baby's airway. Now what about pork chops? Okay. Pork chops or pork steaks, Pork states are also called Pork blade steaks. I steer clear of those because they're solid pieces of meat. So I'm a firm believer from my own personal experience, but also my professional experience. Having worked with so many babies in baby led weaning that if you can not shred a soft cooked piece of meat between your fingers, it is not safe for your baby to eat also.

Katie Ferraro (7m 40s):

And I have watched numerous babies struggle unnecessarily and even choke on solid pieces of meat. So I do not do pork chops or solid cuts of steak. There's lots of ways you can make beef safe for babies, but not from pieces of steak. As far as I am personally concerned, pork chops, the same thing. If I can't safely shred it through my fingers, I am not comfortable giving it to a baby to eat. So I steer clear pork chops and pork steak, which are also sometimes called Pork bladed steaks. Now what about ham? So ham is from the hind leg of the pig and it's cured and it's smoked can be boneless or bone-in, but regardless because it's cured, all ham has way too much salt for babies.

Katie Ferraro (8m 21s):

So we want to steer clear of that. Even if you're looking at a reduced sodium ham, it will still have pretty high amounts of sodium, which Pork on its own is great, cause it's low in sodium, but once you cure it with a lot of salt, it becomes a lesser desirable choice. So if it's a holiday and there's some ham on the table and a baby has a little bit, is it the end of the world? Depends how soft it is. Okay. Depends if it's easily, shreddable a lot of time hand will also have added sugars in it. Like you need to be like, oh honey ham. Sometimes maple syrup is added to the recipe. So it's not my favorite cut of Pork. Same goes for pork Tenderloin and pork roast. Okay. A pork loin roast, for example, it's kind of smaller, like two to four pounds sizes, a little bit larger than tenderloins. The reason why I don't like those is because they also end like a solid pieces of meat that I can't easily shred with my fingers, but also they don't do well when you slow cook them.

Katie Ferraro (9m 8s):

So if you cook the pork Tenderloin or the pork roast or the pork loin roast low and slow with a lot of liquid, like a braising method, usually that helps meats get softer and safer for babies. But in the case of the pork Tenderloin and the pork roast and the pork loin roast, the opposite happens, it ends up getting really tough. So that's the list of meats in the Pork family that I stay away from for baby led weaning. But which ones do I love for baby led weaning? Let's start with the easiest one, ground pork. I love ground meat products for babies. Okay. We don't just grind it up and putting a little small pieces on the plate though, because babies can't pick up small pieces of meat. They only get their pincer grasp a little bit later, usually after eight or nine months. So if your baby's six or seven months of age and you put a small piece of food out there, Hey, they can't pick it up and B even if they could and get it in their mouth, sometimes it's very small pieces can be the exact size that could include their airway.

Katie Ferraro (9m 53s):

So we want to offer the longer strips of Pork and we can do ground pork when it's cut into patties or cooked into patties and then cut into shapes about the size of your adult pinky finger. So pretty much any sort of baby LED WEANING RECIPE or concoction you could put together with ground beef or ground lamb. You could also do with ground pork as well. And if you guys are interested in getting some recipes that are really easy for baby LED WEANING FOR ground beef, because sometimes people are like, Hey, I tried to make a burger and I totally fell apart. I've got five easy recipes using ground beef that you can also substitute ground lamb or ground pork. And I'm going to link to that on the show notes for this episode, if you go to BLW podcast.com and search Pork, okay. So ground pork is a good option. I also like pork ribs now depends upon where you are, especially in the United States.

Katie Ferraro (10m 35s):

There's a lot of regional differences and preferences for ribs. Beef ribs are better than pork ribs and what type of pork ribs are the best. I like the spare ribs sometimes. Okay. Spirits come from the belly of the hog. They tend to be larger and meatier. Okay. So you need a lot of meat in order to get the longer strips of meat that you can pull off the bone and then Safely serve to your baby and those strips of meat. We want them to be about the size of your adult pinky finger. And again, I like to be able to softly shred that cooked meat through my fingers before I offer it to my baby. And so with spirits, a lot of times that will work, but while I have a love hate with spirits, cause sometimes the meat gets really tough. And if it's tough or if it gets crispy, then I won't serve it to the baby. Or there's not enough meat on the bone. I'm like, oh, I spent all the time cooking and there's like hardly any meat.

Katie Ferraro (11m 17s):

And as for the bone, there's no hard and fast rule about when you can or can't offer baby with meat. With the bone. I personally feel safer offering baby meat off the bone once they have a tooth or two. Okay. But I've seen babies with really strong gums to find without it. I've also seen babies with teeth who are like really struggling with the bone. So that's your call at first, I generally will take the soft fatty pieces of meat off of the bone for Baby. For the first few times we try it now I kind of like spare ribs, but I love country-style ribs. I think country-style ribs are like one of the most underutilized cuts of meat. At least in the United States. I have a big family, seven kids like it's of the most affordable ways to serve meat. My husband asked us the other day. He's like, how come we never have meat?

Katie Ferraro (11m 58s):

He's from Texas. And it's not that I dislike me. It just tends to be like kind of expensive and like kind of a pain to prepare for kids. But country-style ribs is one, like we all agree on it's this combination of both like high fat and lean meat. And there's no bone in there. It's nice and tender. It's easy to cook. Basically cannot mess it up and you can get those nice soft shreddable strips about the size of your adult pinky finger to serve to baby. Now, sometimes people ask about Pork and you say, why is Pork called the other white meat? So from a culinary standpoint, it has to do with the fact that the cooked or prepared pork tends to be lighter in color than other types of meat, like beef and lamb. Right? But from a nutrition standpoint, a couple of decades ago, the national pork board did this advertising campaign where there was a perception of pork as being unhealthy, right?

Katie Ferraro (12m 39s):

Cause like if you eat a bunch of ham and bacon and sausage, like it's not that healthy. So they were calling it. The other white meat is at the time. It was like in the nineties when low-fat was so popular and everyone's just eating chicken breasts, right? Chicken breast is pure protein, no fat, well pork loin and pork Tenderloin are pretty lean. Okay. The loin and the chop or the really lean cuts of meat. And from a quote unquote health standpoint, if you're trying to promote adults for eating less saturated, fat and less fat, then yeah, the loin and the chop, the white meat, the lean cuts are good, but for babies, the opposite is true. We always want to choose the fattier cuts of meat. Okay. So it's kind of counterintuitive, especially if you're like a Dietitian you've been trained to teach people not to eat saturated fat actually love fat in meat for babies because when you cook the meat, the fat liquefies and the liquid equates to more moisture and moisture in foods, particularly protein foods helps reduce choking hazard for babies.

Katie Ferraro (13m 32s):

So we want those fattier cuts of meat, which is why I love the country-style ribs. So I like ground pork and I love country-style ribs, but my absolute hands down. Favorite cut of Pork for baby led, weaning drum roll, please. Pork shoulder. I love pork shoulder. A it's super cheap because it's a pretty high fat cut of meat. It's also called different things depending upon where you are in the U S so sometimes the pork shoulder can be marketed, labeled cut as a picnic roast or a Boston butt or a blade roast or a pork butt. But basically if it says butt or shoulder, same difference, they can have a bone in or bone out. It doesn't really matter. They're high enough in fat that when you cook them low and slow, they turn into this perfect texture for baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (14m 16s):

So what do I do with the pork shoulder? You literally have to do like nothing. I'm not a good cook for the record. The best thing about baby led weaning is they don't care or know the goal here is to make it safe, but honestly, pork shoulder ends up tasting amazing. Anyway, so pork shoulder, I will take it. I'll put it in my slow cooker. I will cover it with no added sodium broth or low sodium broth, whatever the lowest salt broth you can find is kale, chicken or beef for vegetable, whatever, six to eight hours in a slow cooker on low or four to five hours on High, to be honest, I tend to buy like the bigger size pork shoulders. Cause I'm making it for a bunch of kids in my family, but also always making extras for baby led weenie. So I'll do like a seven to eight pound pork shoulder. And that sometimes will take six to eight hours on high. Let them just put it in at night and do it over night.

Katie Ferraro (14m 58s):

And then it's done in the morning. And then he's about 10 or 15 minutes to cool and said, you shred it nicely, put some of those solid or the nuts solid, but the strips of shreddable meat in the baby's bowl put a lot of sauce with it. The baby can pick it up and serve it to themselves. He will do plus Solei with pork shoulder. I'll do carnitas for carnitas. A lot of times, you know, you get the cooked pork shoulder, nice and crispy. I just avoid the crispy step for babies. So pull the Pork out of the slow cooker and put some aside for Baby. And then you can like crisp it up or fry it. I do mine under the broiler actually, cause I'm lazy. And I don't like frying things cause it's messy. But I do that under the Royal for the rest of the family. Okay. And same thing. Whenever you're making meats, you cook with low sodium broth, but then pull it out the baby portion.

Katie Ferraro (15m 39s):

Then you can add all the whatever salt or super duper spicy stuff that you want on there after. But I think if you're like at the grocery store and you're in the meat aisle and you're like overwhelmed by all the pork products look for a pork butt or a pork shoulder, put it in your slow cooker or your instant pot. I do it on high for the big ones, six to eight hours. You can't mess it up, put enough liquid in there. So it doesn't burn. You can also just do this on your stove top as well. One additional thing about serving Pork to babies Safely is that you just want to pay attention to the internal cook temp. So for different, like for ground needs, it's a little bit different than for sausages and different for pork shoulder. But for pork shoulder, it's really key that the internal temperature of that pork shoulder be at 170 degrees Fahrenheit or above.

Katie Ferraro (16m 19s):

There's very, very, very off chance that eating raw or undercooked Pork could cause it's called trichinosis to be honest, has hardly been any reported cases of tricking doses in the United States and like forever, but still there's a potential if you serve under cooked meat. So we don't want to serve under cook the meat to baby. So make sure that your pork shoulder, which I hope you all run out and get one and make it for your baby gets cooked to one 70 internal cooktop now for ground products. So whenever you're cooking like ground meat or ground beef, ground pork internal cook temp 160 degrees Fahrenheit, you can't eyeball this. It's not a terrible idea to buy a meat thermometer and just be certain before you potentially serve under cooked meats to your baby. All right. Well, I hope you guys learned a little bit about How to Safely Prepare Pork for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (17m 2s):

If you guys do get some Pork going for your baby and your baby's into it, even if they don't like it tag me in some pictures, I'm on Instagram at baby led weaning team. And if you are not big on buying meat and you want meat delivered to your home, people will say, well, where do you get your meat from? I live in an area that does not have butcher or like really high quality meat selection because I don't buy a lot of meat when I do. I want to be good. So I'm actually a very big fan of ButcherBox. So butcher box sends grassfed high quality delivered meat, right to your doorstep. And they actually have quite a few Pork options. I generally stick to the pork shoulder. There's a bone in pork shoulder that comes in my butcher box every single month.

Katie Ferraro (17m 42s):

Again, I'm feeding 10 people. So seven kids, my husband, me and our au pair. So 10 people on a regular basis, I do one large custom ButcherBox month and that's all the meat that we need for the whole month. So I am an affiliate for butcher box. I do love their pork shoulder. If you're like a meat novice, I'd be happy to tell you what I put in my baby led weaning. ButcherBox actually should write that up. I might do that. I'm going to put on the show notes for this episode, a list of the cuts of meat that I get from ButcherBox. If you guys want to check them out, head to BLW podcast.com/ 175. And I also have a link there on that page, where if you sign up for ButcherBox, you get $10 off your first order, but then you also get whatever the deal of the month is. So sometimes they'll have like two free pounds of ground beef for the life of your butcher box, or they'll do free Turkey around Thanksgiving time, but there's always some sort of a special going on that link will have that special plus $10 off your first order.

Katie Ferraro (18m 34s):

So again, if you want to get some meat, do you want to check out my list of recommended, but your box cuts had to BLWpodcast.com/175. Thanks so much for being here to learn about Pork.