Which Thanksgiving Foods Can Babies Safely Eat?

Katie Ferraro (0s):

How is the mental load of motherhood going for you? This baby stuff is a lot, right? Well my goal is to give you one less thing to worry about and that's Hmm. what am I gonna feed the baby If? you are looking for a one stop solution that literally teaches you exactly how to safely help your baby learn how to eat real food. I wanna invite you to join my signature online program called Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. This is the most comprehensive baby-led weaning program out there. I give you 20 weeks of meal plans for baby-led weaning to help your baby safely eat five new foods a week, which means they're going to finish their 100 FIRST FOODS. Before turning one As one mom who recently joined the program said quote, our lifestyle does not give us any mental capacity to think more about what to do with this baby.

Katie Ferraro (44s):

This program caters to our needs inside of the program. I have my 100 FIRST FOODS content library to show you exactly how to safely prepare all of the 100 FIRST FOODS for your baby's current age and stage. My 100 FIRST FOODS daily meal plan is also included in there. It's all in one place. And a mom in our program. she said she joined because quote, I'm too tired of trying to figure out so many different things at once. I want someone to tell me what to do to catch up my nine month so we can stop using the same familiar foods we've been feeding her. If you are a type A organized per person or like let's say you wanna be that kind of person, you wanna be more organized in what you feed your baby, then I created the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro Program for you.

Katie Ferraro (1m 25s):

You can sign up at babyledweaning.co/program. I have one program with all the stuff you need inside of it to get this thing done and get on with your life. Again, that's babyledweaning.co/program. Check it out and I hope to see you there. One thing that nobody told me about having children was how much water they drink. So we were doing a water delivery service at our house and our water tank started running dry like so much faster compared to when it was just me and my husband. Now that our kids are like self-sufficient and get all their own water. And then we recently added a dog to our family and somehow he drinks a ton of water. And I was always hesitant about drinking tap water. Like I know it's safe where I live, but I just don't like the taste.

Katie Ferraro (2m 5s):

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Katie Ferraro (2m 48s):

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Katie Ferraro (3m 36s):

And that mini map, which suctions to the table is great to have when your baby is starting to join you in family meals reminds you to offer a variety of foods. Again, we put a little portion of protein, a little portion of fruit or vegetable and a starchy food. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in 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. Hey guys, welcome back.

Katie Ferraro (4m 17s):

Happy almost Thanksgiving at the time of this recording. Today's episode is Thanksgiving specific giving. Thanks a first of all for you guys for listening to the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I love getting to connect with you here. I release two episodes every week. Monday I do a mini baby-led weaning training. And then on Thursday there's always an interview with another feeding expert or a guest, something related to feeding your baby. If you ever wanna catch any of the older episodes or search for specific episodes, 'cause there's like a lot of episodes. This is Episode 181 doing two a week. It kind of adds up quickly, but we're covering tons of content. It's really easy to search. If you head to the podcast website, that's BW podcast.com, and you can find pretty much an episode on everything. And if you have an episode idea, I'm very thankful to you because some of my best episode ideas come from you guys.

Katie Ferraro (5m 3s):

I grab my episode ideas from your suggestions from the written reviews for the podcast. So if you've been listening and you like what you're hearing or if you have some suggestions on how to improve or episodes you wanna hear, I'd love if you could leave me a written review on Apple Podcasts. I single handedly read every single review, so thank you for your feedback and thank you for your episode Ideas. Leaving a written review is what really helps other parents find the podcast to learn about baby-led weaning 'cause we're interested in giving everyone's baby a safe start to Solid Foods with baby-led weaning. So Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Today's episode we're gonna be tackling Which, Thanksgiving, Foods, Can, Babies, Safely Eat. I know Thanksgiving can be anxiety inducing for lots of reasons, like family holidays.

Katie Ferraro (5m 47s):

Okay, that's like a whole different, that's a different type of podcast. All right? If we're focusing on the food though, why is it stressful for families? Because oftentimes it's the first time that your baby is going to be eating in front of someone else. That's not you. You are the one who knows your baby best. You are the one who should be comfortable offering your baby new foods. You're the one who should be there trying them if you're the primary caregiver with your baby, right? We never ask someone else to try new foods with our babies if they're not intimately involved in the feeding process. So for most of the families, it's whoever's listening to this podcast's, probably the person who's picking the new foods. But Thanksgiving can freak us out because there's lots of other people around and maybe they're not used to seeing a baby feed themselves. So maybe they want to grab a jar of pureed peas and force feed it to your baby, okay?

Katie Ferraro (6m 28s):

And they might be like, why are you foregoing or skipping traditional spoon feeding? And all of that can kind of come to a bubble around Thanksgiving time. So I want you guys to be prepared for Thanksgiving. We've been practicing with a lot of meat content here on the podcast because for those of you who do eat meat, there's Turkey at Thanksgiving. And if your baby hasn't had a lot of practice with meat, that could like further contribute to your anxiety maybe around Thanksgiving. But I want you guys to have a peaceful and a fun and a relaxing Thanksgiving. So let's dive into which of the foods babies can eat for Thanksgiving. Okay? Babies can technically eat almost all foods. And if your baby gets a bite of pumpkin pie, you guys, 'cause grandma slipped it in there, it's not the end of the world. I know some people that are like, oh my gosh, have I done irreparable damage? 'cause my baby had a bite of birthday cake or pie?

Katie Ferraro (7m 11s):

No, absolutely not. Not the end of the world. But there are, as you're preparing your Thanksgiving dinner, some really little modifications that you can do to help your baby enjoy and participate in Thanksgiving. So hopefully with Thanksgiving time, you've got a highchair that we'll get your baby right up to the table. Okay? I love a couple of highchair. One of my favorite ones is the Know me highchair and I, we've had the designer of the know me, someone from their company on the podcast before. I've had Jeff, the sales guy from Know Me on talking about positioning. If you guys are interested in getting a Nomi High chair, I actually have a really significant discount. I'm not allowed to mention the particulars of it on the podcast, but you can email me if you head to the show notes for this Episode 181.

Katie Ferraro (7m 51s):

So blwpodcast.com/181, send me an email and I'll send you the details of that Nomi High chair if you wanna get this chair that you can pull your baby right up to the table for Thanksgiving. 'cause that's a huge part of baby-led weaning is being able to participate in meals with our babies. And I love that high chair because of it. The fluidly adjusting foot plate, right? Babies need to be able to put their feet flat on a solid foot plate. And the Nomi is the only high chair that adjusts at every single level that your baby's foot is at so that your baby can have a safe swallow no matter where they are in their feeding journey. Now you've got that baby up at the table. What foods are you gonna feed? I'm gonna share some of my favorite picks for Thanksgiving and then the ones I pass on. Because to be honest, we generally don't offer baby more than three foods at one time. You're welcome to do more or less if you want to, but sometimes I see these plates with tons of different types of foods, a super overwhelming for the parents who has time to make five different types of food at every single meal and super overwhelming for the baby.

Katie Ferraro (8m 41s):

Okay? So I generally do. I use the ezpz mini mat when I making a meal for baby. There's two, two ounce portions and a four ounce portion in that suction mat. The two ounce portion, I'll put a small portion of protein and a serving of fruit or a vegetable. And then in the larger four ounce portion, which is like the smile part, so it's like two eyes and a smile in the smile part, I'll put the carbohydrate or whatever the starchy food is that I'm feeding the baby. And I teach more about this inside of my weekly workshop, Baby-Led Weaning FOR BEGINNERS. You can sign up for that at babyledweaning.co. That's where I give everyone my 100 FIRST FOODS list. I'll teach you my five step feeding framework so you can learn how to offer five new foods a week to your baby. And I show you how to plate baby's food so that you're reintroducing baby to familiar foods that you've already tried, but you're still trying one new food a day.

Katie Ferraro (9m 28s):

And that workshop, again, it's at babyledweaning.co. And everyone on the workshop gets a copy of my 100 FIRST FOODS list. And if you guys are interested in that ezpz mat that I was recommending, I am an affiliate for EZPZ. My discount code Katie10 works for 10% off sitewide at ezpzfun.com. And that mini mat, which suctions to the table is great to have when your baby is starting to join you in family meals reminds you to offer a variety of foods. Again, we put a little portion of protein, a little portion of fruit or a vegetable and a starchy food. So if we're talking about the protein, I do love Turkey for baby-led weaning. Again, we've been doing a ton of meat content lately, but when it comes to selecting meats that we offer our baby, we want to choose the fattier cuts of meat.

Katie Ferraro (10m 10s):

So I like the legs and the wing and the thigh meat for babies. And I kind of stay away from the breast because it tends to be more dry and dry foods, particularly dry protein foods can be a choking hazard. I don't do gravy for babies unless I'm the one making the gravy. I make my own gravy because my mom and I are both not like amazing cooks. We're both dietitians. We like kind of cook out of necessity that my mom makes amazing gravy and she taught me how to make amazing gravy. I just don't put any salt. I like take the portion out for the baby before I salt it for everyone else. And you can make a low sodium gravy. It definitely does not taste as good as regular gravy, but you can just withhold the sodium if you're actually making your gravy. And then also put that on the meat for baby if you want to. So I pick the Turkey, but I pass on the ham.

Katie Ferraro (10m 51s):

Okay? Ham is a really high sodium food. There are much safer ways to make pork for baby-led weaning than by offering ham. So check out Episode 175, that's all about pork and how to safely prepare pork for baby-led weaning. I'll give you some more ideas about why we pass on the ham, at least for Thanksgiving. But stick to the Turkey, pick the Turkey pass on the ham. What about the vegetables? Okay, I know a lot of people love like the green bean casserole and there's lots of different ways to make green bean casserole. I have a love-hate relationship with green beans when it comes to baby-led weaning. Hey, I like my own green beans. Personally, like fresh green beans to be somewhat crispy and to snap. Okay, that's not safe for babies. We don't offer any crispy or crunchy or foods that snap 'cause it's not safe for babies to eat.

Katie Ferraro (11m 34s):

So if you've got green beans, you gotta cook 'em till they're kind of soggy, which is gross. Pull out the adult portion and then cook the baby portion till it's nice and soft. That's safer for babies to swallow. But if you're doing a green bean casserole and it's got a bunch of like canned mushroom soup in it, that's not the best bet for baby because there is so much sodium. So I'll pass on the green beans, but I pick the roasted vegetables, okay? If you've got roasted carrots or roasted parsnips or roasted brussels sprouts, as long as they're nice and soft, especially the carrots and the parsnips, those are so easy to cut into those strips that are about the size of your adult pinky finger. Okay? And that little portion pocket of the mini mat that you put one serving a fruit or a vegetable in there, you could put some roasted veggies in there just without added salt.

Katie Ferraro (12m 16s):

Now when it comes to the carbohydrate food, everyone loves mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving time. I love mashed potatoes, but they're such a pain to make. They're so much work. My kids think they're like a special occasion food 'cause I never make them and I love 'em with a lot of butter. So if your baby has had or been exposed to cow's milk protein and you make your mashed potatoes with butter, awesome. Give 'em all the mashed potatoes in the world. Just pull the portion out for the baby before you put the salt in them, right? Because depending upon how you make your mashed potatoes, they can be super duper salty. But the mashed potatoes is actually a nice way to soften up some of the Turkey. If you're Turkey, I mean, again, we wanna be choosing the darker meat, but if you got some Turkey, it's a little on the dryer side, we always can add some dippers or some toppers. I love mashed potatoes as a topper. It's the good source of carbohydrate for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (12m 56s):

Okay? Now some people make yams or candied yams. I would pass on those. Interesting, fun fact, what Americans think. Our yams are really not yams. We only have sweet potatoes in the United States. Yellow sweet potatoes are white sweet potatoes. They're both wonderful for babies. But my husband, the only thing he cooks all year long that's not meat, is at Thanksgiving time, he makes the Ruth's Chris sweet potato casserole. I do not love this one. He is basically like pie. There's so much sugar in it, it's unbelievable. Everyone else loves it when he makes it 'cause it's basically dessert. That is not a food that I would feed the baby. So I'm gonna pass on the sweet potato casserole because of all the added sugar. Also marshmallows, huge choking risks for babies, and I'm gonna pick the mashed potatoes for babies.

Katie Ferraro (13m 35s):

Another one I pass on is cranberry sauce. I like love cranberries and berries, but there is literally no way to make a cranberries palatable that does not involve a lot of sugar. And if you guys have figured out how to do it, okay, also you can't. I did this a while ago and someone sent me a recipe and it was full of Splenda. I was like, okay, technically that's not sugar. But like we also don't offer artificial sweeteners to babies. So if you have a way to make cranberries soft and not like the most heart thing that nobody would ever put in their mouth without adding sugar, I would love to hear it. But for the most part, cranberry sauce either has too much added sugar or literally not palatable because it doesn't have any sugar. So we gotta stay away from added sugar and added salt when we're feeding our babies. Then obviously everyone finishes their Thanksgiving with some sort of a dessert.

Katie Ferraro (14m 17s):

Hey, I'm a big fan of if you're a baby, it's a bite or two a dessert. It's not the end of the world. Is it something you're gonna regularly feed your baby? No. But I think it is important that if you're incorporating your baby into your family mealtime and you're having a special meal and you wanna offer baby a little bit of a special food, hey, as long as it's safe and they're not gonna choke on it, I say you go for it. So I hope you guys have a very, very happy Thanksgiving and again, thank you so much for being a part of this wonderful baby led weaning community. I'll catch you next time. Bye now.