Thrive Market: 10 Baby-Led Weaning Foods to Buy from Thrive Market

Katie Ferraro (1s):

Before we get started, I have a quick baby Ezra update So. I've been following my own 100 First Foods daily meal plan and making five new foods a week for my friend Carissa's Baby Ezra. So we're on week five now, And I. Just wanted to give you an update on how the first month went and then share the five new foods that he's gonna have in week five as we start out month two in case you need some inspiration for your baby. So after week four, Ezra has tried 20 new foods with baby led weaning. They're 20% of the way there and including what can be some of the most challenging foods for parents. The meats, he's done four different meats so far. We did lamb in week one, pork in week two, beef in week three, and chicken in week three. We also did the first four Allergenic foods in that first month as well.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

So now he's got cow's, milk, protein, egg, peanut, and wheat under his belt. And as we move into month two slash week five, we're following my five step feeding framework. So this week Ezra, we'll be having On Monday. we do a new fruit of the week, so that's mango. On Tuesday, a new vegetable, we're gonna be doing tomato. I know technically it's a fruit, but we classify it as a vegetable. Wednesday we do a new starchy food. We're gonna do rice. I'll show you how to make rice safer so it's a lower arsenic risk food. Rice is an important food for baby Ezra's family. We don't wanna do regular reliance on rice Foods, but I'm gonna show them how to make it safe so he can have it. Thursday we'll do a protein food, which is ground meat, and then Friday a new Allergenic food, we'll do fatty fish.

Katie Ferraro (1m 21s):

So if you wanna follow the same 100 First Foods daily meal plan that we're doing with your baby, it's all part of my Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program. I have the exact sequence of foods to feed as well as my hundred first foods content library. So you can learn how to safely prepare all of the foods on the original hundred first foods list. 'cause I want your baby to eat a hundred foods before turning one. And you can follow this exact meal plan and try all these new foods too when you sign up at babyledweaning.co/program Again, that's babyledweaning.co/program And I. Hope to see you there. So which foods are not safe for your baby to eat?

Katie Ferraro (2m 1s):

You guys know I'm usually all about sharing all of the foods that your baby can safely eat, but there are definitely some foods that we steer clear of when starting solid foods. I have a free feeding guide called 15 Foods Never to Feed. That will help you recognize which foods aren't safe. Now most of the foods inside the 15 foods never to feed guide, we avoid because they're choking hazards. But I'm providing you with tips on how to modify those foods so they are safe for your baby to eat. you can download the 15 Foods Never to Feed free feeding guide by going to babyledweaning.co/resources.

Katie Ferraro (2m 42s):

Again, that's babyledweaning.co/resources to download your free feeding guide. 15 Foods Never to Feed with the modification tips on how to make those foods safer, happy feeding. And with Thrive Market it is a little trickier because there's a lot of processed snack Foods on there that are geared towards adults. So there's gonna be way too much sodium. But there are some some great shelf staples, So I got, for example, artichokes. I do not love making artichokes myself from scratch, from fresh artichokes, but canned artichokes, they had these cool bagged ones at Thrive Market, one of the brands had 105 milligrams of sodium. And generally say, my rule of thumb is if I'm choosing a food that I'm gonna offer to the baby, I like to see less than a hundred milligrams of sodium.

Katie Ferraro (3m 22s):

But to be honest, 105 is close enough. I love the convenience, I love it. They're shelf stable. And I, love that they're delivered to my home. 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, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hello and welcome back. Today we're going shopping online to Thrive Market and I'm gonna share 10 baby led weaning foods that you can buy from Thrive Market.

Katie Ferraro (4m 4s):

This is part of a grocery store series that we've been doing for a while now. We just did Target last week. If you go back a little bit earlier in the podcast, from episodes three 17 to 3 25, I did Trader, Joe's Costco, Sprouts, Walmart, Whole Foods Sharing, 10 baby-led weaning foods. You could buy from each of those. I've got Aldi coming up next week. Just really wanna cover all the grocery stores to show you that you can find foods for your baby to eat at pretty much any grocery situation that you're in. Now, if you're working your way through our original hundred first foods list, they might not have all of those foods at your grocery store. And certainly you don't need to go buy any fancy foods that are safe for your baby to eat. But you might need to look a little bit outside of your comfort zone as far as when it comes to shopping to find some of these foods And I do have to agree that finding baby led weaning foods from Thrive Market was a little bit of a challenge for me.

Katie Ferraro (4m 58s):

I like making fresh foods safe for Babies and Thrive Market. It's an odd online grocery store with a ton of packaged and processed foods. But okay, if you love snack foods, you're probably already a fan and a subscriber. And it took me a little while to sort through to find some foods from a hundred first foods list that I could actually buy from Thrive Market. And the biggest problem is sodium, right with packaged foods. With that comes sodium, it's the cheapest preservative. Okay? And a lot of these foods are on the Thrive Market. They're not geared towards children. They do have some kids' foods, many of which have a lot of added sugar. But I was looking for baby foods. I want no added sugar. And I want a minimum amount of sodium. I'm generally looking for less than 100 milligrams of sodium in the serving of a food if it has a label on it that I'm gonna offer to my baby.

Katie Ferraro (5m 39s):

That's my rule of thumb, knowing that most of the foods that I make my baby don't come from a store like Thrive Market because they're fresh Whole foods. But there are some interesting fines there. So I've got 10 of them. The first five that I'm going to share are from my hundred first foods List, working your way through my five step feeding framework. So every week we introduce a baby to five new foods. We do a new fruit on Monday, a new vegetable on Tuesday, a new starchy food on Wednesday, a protein food on Thursday, and an Allergenic food on Friday. And in that way, you're introducing your baby to a wide variety of foods that have different nutrients, that have different texture properties, that have different proteins. For the Allergenic Food introduction, you're helping your baby build a base and achieve diet diversity.

Katie Ferraro (6m 21s):

So I wanted to pick one fruit, one veg, one starch, one protein, and one Allergenic food from my hundred first foods List. And I did this with all of the other grocery store episodes as well. So let's get started with the fruit from Thrive. Market, there's no fresh fruit there. So, we did figs. Now figs are a dried fruit. There's a lot of fig spreads all over Thrive, Market, but they all have added sugar, so those were not an option. Instead I got the organic black mission figs with zero grams of added sugar. you can make a sugar free fig jam with that. One thing I love to do with dried fruits like prunes and figs is you boil them with a little water. Sometimes they do some lemon juice. you can add some vanilla in there.

Katie Ferraro (7m 1s):

You kinda make your own jam like consistency. You cook them and boil them until they kind of explode and then thicken. And then I'll add some more water to kind of thin it out. 'cause I don't want them to be sticky. That's the problem with dried fruits. You can't just cut up figs and give them to your baby because they're sticky and they could get lodged on the roof or the sides of the baby's mouth. So I love figs, but they do need a little bit of work. I will be working them into a sugar free fig jam. I'm working through my own hundred first days meal plan with the baby locally here in San Diego. I'm kind of planning ahead and some of these shelf stable items when I see 'em, especially if they're a little bit more on the affordable side. I want to get them and have them on hand. So I don't get to that day and be like, oh my gosh, I don't have the food on hand because it's a great idea to make five new foods a week for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (7m 44s):

But I like to meal prep it all on one day, usually on Sunday. So Don. Don't have to even think about what the baby is eating for the rest of the week. And if you want to follow my original hundred first day's meal plan where I show you exactly which foods to feed in which sequence, that's part of my baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro program. You can learn more at baby led weaning dot co slash program. So the new fruit that I'm gonna do from Thrive Market are figs when it comes to vegetables. I picked artichokes. Artichokes are a food on my hundred first foods list. The Amori artichoke hearts from there have 105 milligrams of sodium. So there are a couple with like 200 and 400 and that was too much.

Katie Ferraro (8m 24s):

But I'd like the prepackaged artichoke hearts. I don't love cooking like fresh artichokes and you can't always find them So. We have some really unique ways to make artichokes safe for Babies And I, like the ones from Thrive Market also that they're shelf stable.

Katie Ferraro (8m 36s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (9m 53s):

As far as the starchy foods go, I thought there would be more whole grain options on Thrive Market because I'm like it's a shelf stable food, but it's not like a fancy trendy snack food. So I had to search a little bit, but they do have farro. So farro is a whole grain that's on our hundred first foods list. Sometimes they get a little bit frustrated 'cause Bob's Red Mill used to have farro And. I used to order direct from them or from their Amazon page. And now it's like, I think one of the only starchy foods. There's 20 starchy foods on our hundred first foods list. And I believe the only one that Bob's is not carrying anymore is farro. So I found it on Thrive Market and I'm gonna add it to the cart. When it comes to the protein foods, I'm doing mung beans. So our protein list has 20 foods, 10 plant-based proteins and 10 animal-based proteins.

Katie Ferraro (10m 35s):

And so when it comes to the plant-based ones, there are a lot of beans there and a lot of 'em are canned beans or beans you can find easily dried beans even do on your own. But mung beans are a little bit trickier. So they do have a bag of sprouted mung beans on Thrive Market, 10 milligrams of sodium. I love that. I'm gonna grab those. So. I can make mung beans for baby Ezra when it comes to the new Allergenic food. Now there's nine different allergenic foods or food categories, but we have 20 allergenic foods on our list because we're showing you different variations on how to make them. And so one of the ways that we do fish is by offering sardines. Now you might turn your nose up at sardines. Maybe you've become conditioned to think, Ooh, sardines are gross or they smell bad. But Babies absolutely love sardines and it's a wonderful way to introduce them to the potentially allergenic food fish protein.

Katie Ferraro (11m 18s):

So there are a lot of sardines at Thrive Market that have added sodium. And when you look at the sodium content of sardines, you're like, whoa, that's a lot. Well, it is a seafood and seafood is naturally high in minerals including sodium So I. Look at the ingredient list. And I'm looking for an ingredient list. Does does not have the word salt. And there is an option from Wild Planet. That's a brand that's nationally available in the United States. you can find it at most grocery stores, but they don't always have the no added salt version. And they do have it at Thrive Market So I got the Wild Planet SAR Deans. I also wanted to throw in five additional foods So. we could have 10 foods for this episode, but just things that are either from the hundred first foods list or ingredients that you might need to make them safe.

Katie Ferraro (11m 59s):

One of my favorite ones is avocado oil. I love to cook with avocado oil because it has a very high smoke point. It also has a very mild flavor profile, which is good because we want our Babies to learn how to taste the food. And I like avocado oil because of the fatty acid profiles, it's predominantly unsaturated or those heart healthy fats that we want. So I'm gonna get some avocado oil. I was actually kind of surprised that it was more affordable to buy from Thrive Market than it was at my grocery store. Now you have to take into account that there's a subscription. And this is not sponsored in any way by Thrive Market. You do have to pay to use their service. Another item that I picked up from Thrive Market was amaranth. That's a whole grain that's on our hundred first foods list. I like to have all of the whole grains on hand.

Katie Ferraro (12m 39s):

There wa there. I thought there would be more. I got farro, I got amaranth. I was happy with that. I also got some tahini. So that's the way I offer babies the potentially allergenic food. Sesame wheat thin out the tahini, which is the sesame seed paste to make it nice and smooth so it slides off of your adult spoon. It's an indicator that it won't stick to the roof of your baby's mouth or the sides of their mouth. And that's a great way to introduce them to the allergenic food sesame, whenever you're ready. They also, the frozen food section, I mean I know they do not specialize in frozen foods. It was very, very small. You have to pay differently to get a frozen box. There were a couple of frozen options in there that you could honestly get at any grocery store, but I did like that they had as a way to do potato.

Katie Ferraro (13m 19s):

They had frozen hash browns without salt. So I'll use the frozen hash browns as the base of my baby led weaning zucchini qui cups. And this is a combination food that I don't do for baby until phase two of baby led weaning. That's the second eight weeks, but I like to have those on hand. And I love a frozen potato product that doesn't have any salt. Number 10. The last item that I picked up from Thrive Market was a can of plain old pumpkin puree. I can't help myself. Every time I see plain pumpkin puree, I have to buy it. It's usually available year round. Now don't get confused because pumpkin pie filling is different than pumpkin puree. Pumpkin puree is just plain old puree pumpkin with no salt and no sugar. And pumpkin is such a pain and so labor intense to make and I'm like, I can't believe someone did it. And it costs like a dollar in a can.

Katie Ferraro (14m 0s):

So get the canned pumpkin, 'cause you can mix it into so many different foods you can incorporate it in when your baby starts eating those combination foods. We've got some great little pumpkin pie bites that we make, but we use it for pumpkin pie, oatmeal, And, I, say pie, but none of these have any added sugar. And I have a lot of different pumpkin recipes inside of our program if you wanna check that out. Again, it's baby led weaning co slash program. The 10 foods again that we did from Thrive Market, I got figs, artichoke, farrow, mung beans, sardines, avocado oil, tahini for sesame, frozen hash browns, amaranth, and pumpkin. I will link up the other grocery store episodes if you want more inspo when you're hitting the store and make a, some parents are like, I just made a list like from that episode of exactly what to buy.

Katie Ferraro (14m 41s):

Granted, you could buy a lot of these foods at different stores, but I just wanna show you that no matter where you're shopping, you're pretty likely to find some foods that you can make safe for your baby. All of the other grocery store lists. Plus the notes from this episode will be on the Shownotes, which you can find at BLW podcast.com/371. Thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science in using your brain, check out some of the offerings from AirWave. We're online at BLWpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, And, I'll see you next time. If you're interested in doing baby-led weaning, but you're not exactly sure, like what does that mean?

Katie Ferraro (15m 23s):

What does it look like? Where do I start? My online program called Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro has everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods and get them to eat over a hundred foods before they turn one, whether you're terrified of choking or maybe you've started but you feel like you're feeding your baby the same foods over and over 'cause you don't know what to feed next, or you're looking for guidance on how to prepare foods safely for your baby's age and stage. My program has exactly what you need. There's five hours of concise self-paced video training. you can knock this thing out during nap time this week. You also get access to my hundred first foods content library so you can see and learn exactly how to prep all of the a hundred foods as well as my original a hundred days meal plan. I've been refining this program for the last seven years, just today of On Road to Be and told me that the a hundred days meal plan has been a game changer for her busy lifestyle.

Katie Ferraro (16m 12s):

When you join the program, you also get access to over a hundred phase two combination food recipes. So you're gonna try out the trickier textures, push your baby's palate. And what's cool about these recipes is your whole family will enjoy them. So everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods is inside of the program. It's created by me, a registered dietitian who specializes in infant feeding. If you're tired of hunting and pecking around the internet trying to piece this stuff together on your own, I put it all in one convenient place for you. I invite you to check out the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program that's at babyledweaning.co. Again, that website is babyledweaning.co. And click on program to learn more.