Fun with Finger Foods

By Annabel Karmel from 'First Meals and More: Your Questions Answered'

First Meals and More Finger foods are a wonderful way to introduce your baby to various tastes and textures, and will help to encourage independent eating. Your baby will enjoy the process of feeding himself as well as the variety of foods that you offer.

How can you tell if your baby is ready for finger foods? There are two schools of thought about this one. Some people believe that finger foods should be offered first, and in many cases instead of purées. Others believe that purées should be offered first, and when babies are developmentally ready to pick up, bite, chew, and swallow finger foods, they can be offered –somewhere after nine months. Personally, I think that there is no reason why the two approaches can’t be combined. If your baby is a confident eater, offering a variety of finger foods alongside purées is a good way to accustom him to different textures and tastes, and also encourages him to learn the basics of self-feeding.

Babies naturally begin to pick things up and explore them, inevitably putting them into their mouths, at around five or six months. From this point on, offering food instead of a toy can provide a nice introduction to the exciting world of food! Be careful what you choose: your baby should be able to gnaw the food without choking or gagging, and be able to derive enough taste by working on it with his gums or budding teeth. Always supervise your baby when he is eating finger food, no matter what his age.

I would suggest offering finger foods at every mealtime, alongside your baby’s normal purées, but only after you have established several different fruits, vegetables, and other foods that have been successfully introduced, without any adverse reactions or affects. I’ve also found that it’s useful to have a bowl with several different compartments for holding a rage of different finger foods.

Try beginning with easy-to-mange pieces of fruits (melon, apple, banana, kiwi fruit), lightly steamed vegetables (carrot, broccoli, green beans), little sandwiches with healthy fillings, rice cakes, small chucks of cheese, hard-boiled eggs, healthy whole-grain breakfast cereals, berries, dried fruits, well-cooked pasta shapes, toast wedges, and the like. Choose brightly colored fruits for their enhanced nutritional value, and whole-wheat goodies over those that have been refined.

Offering finger foods will help to teach your baby to feed herself, and increase her food repertoire, if she picks something up and tastes it, she may not like it to begin with or for the first few times she tires it, but eventually she may consider it to be familiar enough to eat. The more you encourage this process, the easier the transition to independent eating will be.

Annabel Karmel is a leading children’s author who has written 17 bestselling books. She has frequently appeared on Regis and Kelly, The View, The Today Show, and The Early Show. First Meals and More: Your Questions Answered is available now in bookstores.

Peach Melba Popsicles

Fresh fruit popsicles are great for soothing sore gums when your little one is teething, and for bridging the gap between purées and solid food. They are also a great way to get more fluids into your sick child. This is a lovely combination of fruits, but these would also be tasty made with peaches and strawberries.

Ingredients:

2 large, ripe peaches

1 ½ cups fresh or frozen raspberries (or you could use strawberries)

1 ¼ cups of peach or apple juice

2-3 tbsp sugar (optional)

Directions:

1.  Peel the peaches, then quarter them and remove the pits. Put the peaches and berries in a blender with half the juice and blend to a purée. Press the purée through a sieve to remove the seeds.

2.  Mix the purée with the remaining peaches or apple juice and sweeten to taste with sugar, if needed.

3.  Pour the purée into popsicle molds and freeze for a few hours or overnight.

Reprinted by arrangement with DK Publishing from First Meals & More: Your Questions Answered. Copyright © 2009 by DK Publishing.  Text © 2009 by Annabel Karmel.  All rights reserved

5
Average: 5 (2 votes)
 

0 comments

Most recent

Sign in to leave a comment!

Today on JustMommies

Pilgrims Unit Study

In this unit study you will learn about the Pilgrims' voyage from England to America on the Mayflower.

Cloth Diapering Basics: Beginner’s Guide to Cloth Diapering

If you are thinking about starting your baby off with cloth diapers, you may have lots of questions on how to get started.

Fertility Boosting Herbs

Long before modern medicine developed the drugs and high-tech procedures we’re all familiar with today, practitioners treated many ailments with herbal remedies, including infertility.

Castor Oil to Induce labor

So you've reached 40 weeks of pregnancy and baby has not arrived. You had hoped to go in labor on your own and the idea of a medical induction does not appeal to you.

Article Tools

Print this article

Email this article

RSS

Bookmark and Share

From the Message Boards

March 2009 Playroom

My Pal Violet/Scout

Are any of you getting this? We bought one for Jena today, It was either on sale or marked down at...

Pregnancy Loss

I guess I'll be joining you

Gosh, I never thought I'd be posting here, but here goes. I'm Melissa (28) and DH (30) and I have be...

August 2009 Playroom

Update on us:-)

So i've been pretty MIA for a while thanks to my little Diva Child lol...she's pretty needy (but so...

February 2009 Playroom

Size Check!

What size clothes are your babies wearing? If you're buying clothes for Christmas, what sizes are y...

August 2009 Playroom

Wanna see some cute toddlers in costume?

Then come vote in the March 08 PR Costume Contest......

» Check out the friendliest message board for moms and moms-to-be!