B3RD

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Humans are the only mammals who…

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If you’re going to start a sentence with “humans are the only mammals who,” I sure hope you’re planning to share a fun fact, not to make an argument (unless your argument is that humans are unique among mammals.)

Alas, when I hear “humans are the only mammals who,” I brace myself for one particular argument: milk drinking.

Should humans drink milk from other species?

Well, humans are the only mammals who drink milk after weaning.

Tirzah Mae and Beth-Ellen drinking cow's milk
Young humans drinking the milk of another species

Folks, this is not a scientific argument. Say I accept your premise that humans are the only mammals who drink milk from other species. Does it follow that humans ought not drink milk from other species? No, this merely means that humans are different from other mammals.

The reality is, this is only one of many significant ways in which humans are different from other mammals. Humans build fires to heat their homes and cook their food. Humans wear clothing. Humans use soap. Humans write blog posts. Humans use medications to treat and prevent illness. We are truly exceptional creatures.

If “humans are the only mammals who drink milk after weaning” is an argument against milk-drinking, why shouldn’t the same argument be used to say we should all run around naked and unwashed? Why shouldn’t we also argue that we should only eat raw food (or food that has just happened to be cooked by the sun, without human intervention)?

Furthermore, is the statement that “humans are the only mammals who drink milk after weaning” even true?

When I was growing up, we took regular trips to visit my grandparents in rural northeastern Nebraska. There was one particular farm along the way that kept their cows and their pigs in the same pen. My siblings and I were always fascinated (and a bit grossed-out, to be honest) to see the pigs suckling on the cows. Perhaps the only reason “humans are the only mammals who drink milk after weaning” is because few other mammals have opportunity? After all, I think humans might be the only mammals who express their milk and that of other animals to be consumed versus consuming it only directly from the breast/udder.

So, anyway, if you’re trying to make an argument that cow’s milk (or non-milk cow’s milk substitutes) is unnecessary for humans, please try another argument.

This rant brought to you in response to something I read from someone who should have known better. Since I actually agreed with her true underlying point (that a child who is allergic to cow’s milk doesn’t need an alternate milk source), I didn’t bother to try to straighten out her argument – but I did want to get my frustration with that argument off my chest.

Categories B3RD

PSA: There’s nothing wrong with serving your baby purees

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Half of you are shaking your heads and thinking “No duh”. You raised your children on little jars of Gerber and the kids turned out just fine.

But in the years since I was a tot, “Baby-Led Weaning” has taken off, and with it, a whole new set of food rules for babies. One that many crunchy types have latched onto is that purees are not just unnecessary (that one is true, folks – babies can learn to eat without purees) but are harmful. This, friends, is simply not true.

While my older three barely ate any purees as their first foods, Shiloh has eaten purees almost every day since she started eating solids two or three weeks ago. She’s had cream of peanut and butternut squash soup, homemade applesauce, and pureed pumpkin whenever the family has those food items – which, for right now, is almost every day. That’s what we eat in the fall when squash and apples are in season.

Shiloh with pumpkin on her face.

And she’ll be just fine.

What you do want to watch for is that your baby doesn’t ONLY get purees for months on end. The evidence suggests that there is an ideal window for the introduction of texture – babies who don’t get introduced to textured foods by about 9 months are much more likely to become pickier eaters and to develop texture aversions. (References: Delayed introduction of lumpy foods to children during the complementary feeding period affects child’s food acceptance and feeding at 7 years of age; The effect of age of introduction to lumpy solids on foods eaten and reported feeding difficulties at 6 and 15 months).

So don’t only serve your baby purees, but don’t stress if you find yourself picking up a little container of puree at the grocery store or blending some for your baby: There’s nothing wrong with serving your baby purees.

Categories B3RD

COVID’s got my back

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The last time my Dietetic Registration cycle was up, I was mother to a seven-month-old infant and just eight months out of the dietetics workforce. I had lots of opportunities for continuing education in my working days, when work-related conferences counted as continuing Ed and when I was regularly confronted with questions in need of answering.

This year, I’m up for recertification again, but this time I’m mother to a five-year-old, a four-year-old, two two-year-olds, and a two-month-old. I’ve been momming hard for the past five years… and continuing education has been at the bottom of the priority list.

Which meant my continuing education portfolio looked terrible going into 2020. I had maybe 40 hours of the needed 75 hours still to complete.

My learning log, with its 75 hours of continuing education, was due May 31.

I worked on continuing education some, but nowhere near enough.

I registered for our state conference so I could guarantee eight hours – and then the conference was cancelled by coronavirus (it did eventually get taped and placed online, so it wasn’t a complete bust, but it did mean I had to complete it on my own time while juggling mothering and homemaking versus getting it all done in one day while Daniel holds down the fort at home.)

At any rate, when May 31 rolled around, I still had a LOT of continuing education to complete.

But COVID had my back.

Toward the end of March or beginning of April, when it became clear that life would not be back to normal for a good long time, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics extended the deadline from May 31 to July 15.

Which is why I closeted myself in my room on Daniel’s day off for the fourth (on the third) to work on continuing education. And why Daniel took the day off today while I hid away in his office.

Between the two days, I completed 19 hours of continuing education and submitted my log.

Thanks to COVID, I’m going to keep on being a dietitian.

But I’m also DEFINITELY putting a plan in place to make sure this doesn’t happen the next time around!

Categories B3RD, Homemaking

When labels mislead

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I have a deep, dark secret. It’s bound to have other dietitians ready to throw me out of the club.

I don’t read labels.

Honestly.

I generally buy food based on price and count on my general tendency towards minimally processed ingredients for ensuring that I don’t end up with too much sodium or added sugar in our diets (although, who am I kidding, we get plenty of added sugar in our diets – I know it’s there because I’m removing it from my sugar bins by the cup- and spoonful.)

Anyway, there is one item where I routinely read the label (or at least read it when I’m deciding between stuff – then I go on autopilot.)

I read the labels on cans of fruit.

We eat canned fruit almost every day. If we were to try to get our 3-4 servings of fruit per day from fresh fruit alone, it could get pretty expensive (or pretty unvaried during certain seasons); but by using a combination of canned, frozen, dried, and (seasonal) fresh fruit, I can feed my family a good amount of fruit without breaking the bank.

But since I feed my family canned fruit on a daily basis, I have nutritional criterion for what I buy. I want as little added sugar as possible. What’s more, I want as little added sweetener as possible.

So, when possible, I try to get fruit packed in water. If that’s not available, I’ll go with fruit packed in its own juice or in extra light syrup. If fruit is packed in some other kind of juice, I want the concentration of that juice to be the same as the concentration of straight juice (so no using half the water to reconstitute fruit juice – that’s the nutritional and flavor equivalent of heavy syrup.) I only buy fruit in heavy syrup as a treat (for instance, you can’t buy canned plums any other way – and I have fond memories of my mom’s home-canned plums so I pick some up a couple times a year.)

Then came Splenda – and fruit canners decided all their dreams had come true. Unlike other artificial sweeteners, Splenda is heat-stable AND replaces sugar molecule-for-molecule. This means that they can use Splenda to get the same results as sugar (sweetness and better fruit texture) without the extra calories/added sugar that consumers don’t want. Perfect. They started using Splenda in their canned fruits.

I am not a fan.

Not to say that I’m not a fan of Splenda in general. It is a wonderful substitute for those who need to reduce sugar and still want to make their own recipes (so, it’s a great choice for diabetics who want to be able to eat their favorite dessert without having to make the rest of the meal completely carb free).

But even in the absence of the calories from sugar, I don’t want my children to grow up thinking canned fruit should be as sweet as it would be if it were canned in heavy syrup. I want to train their taste buds to think that water-packed (or “own-juices-packed”) fruit is “the way canned fruit should taste.”

But then I started using Walmart grocery pickup, where reading labels isn’t as easy as scanning visually while you’re tossing a can into your cart.

At first, I bought the Great Value fruit labeled “No Added Sugar.” But that was packed in Splenda. No go.

I switched to fruit “With 100% Fruit Juice”. It contains an extra 3 grams of sugar per serving (that’s 3/4 teaspoon) than fruit canned in water would.

But last week, I saw that there was a new item available: Great Value canned fruit packed IN WATER.

“Hooray! At last!” I thought, as I added it to my favorites and ordered some cans.

My hooray turned to disappointment when I looked at the label before I opened the first can of peaches.

These were not peaches packed in water. These were peaches packed in Splenda. They’d just changed the name of the “No added sugar” variety.

Grr.

Categories B3RD, Book Reviews

Book Review: The Dinner Diaries by Betsy Block

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Feeding a family. Raising healthy eaters. Topics I’m passionate about. Even while I was still working on my degree, I knew that helping mothers feed their families and raise healthy eaters was what I wanted to do as a career. I made that the focus of my graduate work. After a stint in long term care, I moved to WIC, where I was able to live my dream (at least as far as career goes.)

Subtitled “Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World”, Betsy Block’s book should be right up my alley, right?

Wrong.

I should have known from the blurb on the back cover:

“A harried mother of two, Betsy Block is in pursuit of the perfect family meal: local, toxin-free, humane, and healthful.”

But the book was in a Dewey Decimal category I was trying to close and I figured “how bad can it be?”

Pretty bad.

Betsy Block’s The Dinner Diaries is basically a manual on how NOT to feed a family or raise healthy eaters. In order to save you the work of reading it, allow me to summarize the main points.

Tip 1: Start with all the wrong priorities

It’s no mistake that “healthful” is last on the list of Block’s priorities a la the back of the book. In reality, her definition of “healthful” is suspect enough that you might as well knock it off the list. Block is all about the local (which has very little impact on health), toxin-free (the American food supply, with the exception of methyl-mercury containing fish, is actually one of the safest in the world), and humane/sustainable (an ideological issue but not a health one.) Her couple of concessions to actually health practices include trying to eat less sugar and (at the very end of the book) attempting to eat more whole grains.

If you’d rather actually have some success at feeding a family or raising healthy eaters, I recommend starting with priorities that will actually help you achieve health. Try: increasing fruit and vegetable intake (no, it doesn’t have to be fresh – frozen or canned are fine), increasing variety (of protein sources, vegetables, starches, you name it – variety is good), sitting down together as a family to eat (even for snacks), having sweets around less frequently and subbing fruit instead, or experimenting with forms of cooking other than frying. I can give you more suggestions if you’d like, but those are some of the biggies.

Tip 2: Lecture your children about food

There’s nothing like a good guilt trip to help kids form a healthy attitude toward food, amiright?

Okay, no.

But Block seems to think it’s a great idea. She lectures about all those wrong priorities, lectures when kids won’t eat something, lectures when kids do eat something. She sets up learning opportunities for herself (like going to see a pig that she’s later going to eat) and leaves the children behind lest it be too tense for them – not that she won’t lecture them about it when she gets home. When her daughter asks to help cook, Betsy asks if that means her daughter will eat what they prepare. When her daughter says “probably not”, Betsy declines the offer of help.

If you’d like your children to actually develop a healthy attitude toward food, start by modeling healthy attitudes towards food yourself (by the way, Block’s obsessive interest in “perfect” food isn’t healthy.) Eat in moderation. Eat a variety. Don’t obsess over food (either in a “I must have sweets now” or in a “my diet must be absolutely healthy all the time” way).

If you’d like your children to develop a healthy attitude toward food, involve them in selecting and preparing food. Preschoolers will love searching for a red vegetable at the supermarket. Kids can learn to cook early on. Gardening or going to a farm to see how food is made is a great activity for kids. BUT…not as a way to coerce your kids into eating something. That’s Betsy’s mistake. She read that when kids cook with their families, they’re more likely to eat what they make – so she thought she could coerce her daughter into eating by letting her help cook. Letting your child cook isn’t a one-time magic bullet to healthy eating. Instead, it’s a process by which children develop positive associations with food, take ownership of food (in a healthy way), and learn skills that will help them eat well when they decide that they’re willing to try eating asparagus.

If you’d like your children to develop a healthy attitude toward food, move the conversation from nutrition to habits. Dina Rose’s excellent website It’s not about nutrition is a great resource for changing the way families talk about food. The gist of Rose’s message is to start talking about proportion, variety, and moderation (Check out this article for more info.) Changing the conversation makes a real difference, both in helping kids eat healthfully, but also in helping them think healthfully about food.

In the very first chapter of Betsy Block’s book, she writes of a nutritionist who refused to work with her because of her emphasis on organic foods. Block was shocked that organic foods were controversial. Except that to call the “health benefits” of organic controversial is putting it mildly. Despite many attempts to prove otherwise, there is no compelling evidence that organic foods are more nutrient-rich or more safe than conventionally grown ones. It’s fine for people to eat organic, but they’re fooling themselves if they think that organic = healthy. Block’s choice to focus on secondary issues instead of primary ones meant that her memoir is a recounting of an exercise in frustration, accomplishing next to nothing in terms of changing her children’s habits and attitudes regarding food.

The nutritionist who ended up working with Block (although we only hear about her in the first chapter) did a good job of trying to get Block to focus on some actually beneficial eating practices (unfortunately, she did not address the task of how to communicate with children about food) – but it was all for naught. Block would not be dissuaded from her ill-informed search for dietary perfection and from her agenda of changing her children’s eating patterns by coersion. I think the first nutritionist made a wise choice.

Please, people, don’t be Betsy.

Rating: 1 star
Category: Food memoir
Synopsis: Betsy Block tries to make over her family mealtimes.
Recommendation: Ugh. No.

Categories B3RD

Dietary Guidelines for Americans summarized

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Remember how I said (back before I stopped blogging) that the Guidelines aren’t written for the general public? The reality is that the five guidelines can sound like mumbo-jumbo to the average consumer. My goal here is to translate the guidelines into more average-person-friendly language.

1. Your entire eating pattern is more important than specific foods or nutrients.

Eating a healthy diet isn’t about vilifying a food group (i.e. grains or meats) or an individual nutrient (i.e. fat or carbohydrates). Nor is it about consuming the current super-food fad (i.e. quinoa or coconut oil).

It’s about your whole pattern of eating and the balance of food groups and nutrients.

2. Choose a variety of the most nutritious foods in the quantities you need to stay healthy.

Variety. You should eat foods from all the food groups (i.e. not just meat and grains). You should eat a variety of foods within each food group (i.e. not just potatoes and lettuce in the vegetable group.)

Nutritious. This means with lots of vitamins and minerals without many empty calories. This means choosing whole grains more frequently and white flour less frequently. It means choosing fresh fruit over fruit drinks. It means choosing a steak (preferably lean) over a hot dog. It’s choosing the grilled chicken over the nuggets.

Quantity. Eat the amount you need to maintain a healthy weight. Eat until you’re satisfied instead of until you’re stuffed.

3. Decrease sugar, solid fat, and salt intake.

Drink less soda and more water. Eat fewer fruit snacks and more whole fruit. Eat less meat and more fish and beans. Eat less cheese and more low fat yogurt. Eat less processed food and make more meals from scratch.

4. Trade healthier foods for less healthy ones.

Is this starting to sound like a broken record? Use brown rice instead of white. Eat fruit instead of drinking juice. Drink low fat milk instead of whole milk. Choose fish as your protein more frequently. Have a spinach salad instead of an iceberg lettuce one. Choose a baked potato instead of fries.

**And here’s where I need to remind us of the first recommendation again. Your entire eating pattern is more important than specific foods or nutrients. Neither I nor the DGA is recommending that you NEVER EAT white rice, iceberg lettuce, or French fries. Juice is fine on occasion. For that matter, a full-sugar soda is fine on occasion. It’s the overall pattern of your eating that makes the difference.**

5. Everybody is responsible for helping Americans eat healthier diets.

It’s easy to want to play a blame game when it comes to nutrition and health. Some say the poor dietary habits of Americans are each individual’s fault. Others blame food manufacturers or school lunch ladies or food deserts or supersized meals at McDonald’s.

This Guideline doesn’t point fingers, but it does say that everyone can play a role in improving the dietary habits of Americans. Workplaces and schools can make healthy options more available in their cafeterias. Food manufacturers can work to reduce the sodium in their food products. McDonald’s can offer to sub a salad for the fries in a value meal.

Categories B3RD

A couple things to know about the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

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1. The Audience determines the message and the method of communication

A good question to ask yourself when reading anything is who is the intended audience?

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) make clear who their intended audience is. The DGA website splash page states

“Intended for policymakers and health professionals, this edition of the Dietary Guidelines…”

In case that isn’t clear, the introduction to the Guidelines reads

“The primary audiences are policymakers, as well as nutrition and health professionals, not the general public.”

Why is this important? (That is to say, why do *I* think this is important?)

This is important because the intended audience determines what information is shared and how it is shared.

I’ve seen multiple criticisms in the popular media complaining that the 2015 DGA aren’t consumer-friendly or that they contain awkward language. But the DGA aren’t intended for the consumer. They’re to be used by professionals to craft consumer messages. That means they are going to say things like “Americans should limit added sugars to less than 10% of total calories” – leaving the “Americans should consume less soda” to those professionals who are creating consumer messages (such as MyPlate – The federal government’s consumer food guidance graphic.)

2. What the media focuses on is not necessarily what the guidelines focus on

What have you heard about the recommendations?

Let me guess: Cholesterol is okay now. Sugar is the bad guy. Women who drink more than one alcoholic drink per day are binge drinkers and unhealthy. Men need to eat less meat.

The media focuses on these items because they’re new (absence of cholesterol restriction, insertion of sugar restriction) or controversial (alcohol and meat intake in general). They make good stories.

But to focus on the new and the controversial misses the bulk of what the guidelines recommend: Americans need to eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and need to consume fewer empty calories.

Does that feel boring? I’ll bet it does. You already knew that you were supposed to do that. But the reality remains that Americans are NOT doing that – and that those dietary changes (regardless of your views on the new or controversial stuff in the recommendations) are what is most important for improving the dietary quality of Americans.

If the message you got from the news coverage of the guidelines was “cholesterol is no longer the bad guy, sugar is”, you got the wrong message. If your application is to go out and eat a much beef, pork, and eggs as you can while eschewing everything with “sugar” on its nutrition facts panel, you’ve made the wrong application. But I fear that is the sort of messages people are going to be getting from the media coverage of the guidelines.

Categories B3RD, Book Reviews

Book Review: The Baby Food Bible by Eileen Behan

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Face it, feeding a baby is hard work. Whether at the breast, from a bottle, or at the table, infant feeding takes time, energy, and savvy. (And don’t even get me started on the cleanup!)

For the health savvy mom, feeding a baby can be even harder – there’s so much conflicting information, so much advice, so many different ways to go. Start at four months or six? Rice cereal or avocado as a first food? Wait 3-5 days between foods or introduce mixtures at will? Cut grapes into quarters or sixteenths? Jarred or homemade baby foods? Or maybe baby-led weaning is the way to go? Should I choose organic foods or are conventionally grown foods okay? Should my baby eat salt? Sugar? Dairy foods? Soy foods? Wheat? Peanuts? The list of potential questions goes on and on.

I wish there were a good quality book that addressed all these issues (and addressed them the way I do – because, of course, I know it all :-P), but unfortunately, to my knowledge, no such book exists.

Eileen Behan’s The Baby Food Bible does a pretty good job though as a basic resource for moms. Behan, a dietitian who works with families, does a decent job summarizing general infant feeding recommendations as of 2008 when The Baby Food Bible was published.

The largest section of the book is a list of healthy food items (from all the food groups), discussing how moms can make them into purees for their infants and how they can incorporate those foods into family meals. She gives easy “recipes” for the purees, including how much water to use per unit of food and both stovetop and microwave cooking times. For the mom who’s going the puree route (which you don’t have to, by the way – Tirzah Mae ate purees maybe twice), it’s a good resource. The next largest section is a collection of multi-ingredient recipes that can be pureed to be fed to babies, as well as to the rest of the family. Again, if you’re going the puree route, it’s a good resource.

Now, every so often, Behan says something about a specific food that reflects traditional infant feeding biases that I don’t agree with (and that don’t have research to back them up) – like when she says that cucumbers are “not recommended for infants”, but are “a good snack food for older toddlers.” It’s true that cucumbers do not puree well, but I don’t see any reason why an infant eating stage 3 or 4 foods shouldn’t have little chunks of the inner portion of a cucumber (Tirzah Mae does whenever we’re eating cucumbers). Likewise, Behan writes that “onions are not a baby food” and suggests only that they can be included in recipes for older children because they add flavor. I’ve never seen any reason to avoid onions with babies (except cultural biases against it) – and we eat sauteed onions (or sauteed onions and zucchini or onions and peppers or…) rather frequently.

Other recommendations Behan makes are outdated – the most notable being that she gives the (then current) recommendation to avoid potentially allergenic foods in the first year. Pediatricians and dietitians had been giving that advice for years based on a “better safe than sorry” principle while research was being conducted to determine whether it made a difference. Well, in the past 2 (maybe 3?) years, the research has come out and indicates that holding off on potentially allergy-causing food has the exact opposite effect than the one we’d hoped for. We now know that introducing potential allergens between the ages of 4 and 6 months has a protective effect against the development of food allergies.

And then there are the philosophical questions that don’t necessarily have scientific evidence on their side – organic foods, local foods, humane foods, etc. Behan generally jumps on the bandwagon with each of these, although she does acknowledge to some degree that parents may have different priorities.

So… now for the difficult part. Do I recommend The Baby Food Bible?

If you’re a mom with a baby younger than 8 months, you intend to go the puree route, and you want to learn how to make your own baby food, this is a great resource. If you’ve got a baby older than 8 months, you should be working on introducing textures (which Behan doesn’t talk a whole lot about but which I consider a very important step in ensuring healthy eating patterns into adulthood – something I believe the research supports). If you intend to skip purees – hey, I did too – wanna compare notes? If you intend to just buy staged baby food from the store, the bulk of this book won’t apply to you.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Infant feeding
Synopsis: Behan discusses then-current recommendations for infant feeding and gives a giant list of foods and how to prepare and puree them for your baby.
Recommendation: Worthwhile if your baby is under 8 months, you intend to feed your baby purees, and you want to learn how to make your own baby food.

Categories B3RD

My Child “Choked”

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Little scares a mother more than hearing that half-retching, half-coughing noise that she almost universally describes as “choking”.

But just because it scares a mother doesn’t mean it should scare a mother.

You see, that little cough/retch? That’s not choking. Generally, it’s gagging.

According to the Mayo Clinic, choking is “when a foreign object becomes lodged in the throat or windpipe, blocking the flow of air”. By definition, choking makes no sound, since no air is able to flow through a blocked windpipe.

Gagging, on the other hand, is a function of the gag reflex, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the reflex contraction of the muscles of the throat caused especially by stimulation (as by touch) of the pharynx”. Gagging is an involuntary reaction in which the the throat contracts to prevent choking.

Did you catch that?

Gagging prevents choking.

While the sound of gagging can make a mother’s heart jump into her throat, it isn’t a sign that something is going wrong with your child. It’s a sign that something’s going right. Your child’s body is working as it’s supposed to, protecting your child from choking.

What does this mean for the mother?

For one, it means you can breathe a sigh of relief. When I’m feeding Tirzah Mae and she gags on a bite, my heart leaps just like other moms’ hearts do – but since I know what gagging means, I can then relax and thank God that He created her body to help keep her safe.

For two, it means you need to be vigilant when feeding your child. A choking child isn’t going to give a cough to let you know to rush to her side. A choking child can’t breathe, can’t make noise. Which is why young children should sit down to eat and why mom should be right there beside them while they’re eating. Letting a child wander with snack in hand ups the choking risk in two ways: a child distracted by walking is more likely to chew insufficiently or to send something down the wrong pipe (I find this to be the case when I’m walking and eating) and a child who is wandering about while eating is not necessarily being supervised in such a way that a caretaker can quickly intervene were true choking to occur. (There are social and nutritional benefits of sitting down to eat as well, but I won’t go into those here.)

When I was working as a WIC dietitian, mothers mentioned choking often in reference to introducing solids to their babies. Often, mothers insisted that their eight to nine month old babies couldn’t eat anything but pureed baby foods because they choked on them. Of course, these moms didn’t realize that their children were gagging rather than choking. But what about their response? Is mom right to say that her child can’t eat a certain food or a certain texture because she gags on it?

Yes and no.

Gagging is an interesting thing. While the gag reflex is classically induced by touching the pharynx (that is, the soft tissue at the back of the throat), it can also be induced by smells (as of rotten food), by sight (as with seeing maggots), or even by a thought (such as the thought of eating rotten food or finding maggots in the bottom of your lunch pail). Additionally, some people have more or less sensitive gag reflexes – such that different textures, different smells, and different tastes cause them to gag.

For most children, gagging when introduced to a new texture is simply the body doing what it’s supposed to do, keeping foreign bodies from entering the airway. As a child becomes more adept with and used to the new texture, gagging should decrease. However, in certain circumstances, children with hypersensitive gag reflexes will have severe sensory issues with food which can be exacerbated by forcing a child to eat foods that stimulate their gag reflexes.

So what should mom do?

In general, if your child gags at the first taste of a new food (or first try with a new texture), I recommend waiting until your child is calm (which may be two seconds or may be much longer) before trying another bite.

If your child eats several bites of that new food, gagging two or three times throughout the feeding, this represents a normal response and there is no reason to stop feeding your child that food or texture. Gagging will become less frequent as the child becomes more familiar with the taste and/or texture of that food.

If, on the other hand, your child gags on three successive bites of the same food (or if your child turns away or clenches his/her teeth when you offer a bite), I recommend that you call it quits for the meal. This ensures that you aren’t creating unpleasant associations with that food in your child’s mind – those unpleasant associations can actually condition your child’s gag reflex to always respond to that particular food, a situation you definitely want to avoid.

Then, you’ll want to do a little Sherlock-style sleuthing. What do you think it was that triggered your child’s gag reflex? Was this a brand new flavor for your child or has he tasted it before? Was this a new texture for your child or has he had a similar texture before? If this was a brand new flavor, try mixing that food with another accepted food the next time you try it. If it was a brand new texture, try modifying the texture just a little bit the next time you try it (if baby has only had watery purees and baby gagged on a lumpy mix, offer a thicker puree before introducing a lumpy mix; if baby has only had purees with some lumps and gagged on chunks, try getting your child used to minced textures before introducing chunks; etc.) The goal is to ease a child’s transition into the next texture “level” or novel flavor.

It is valuable to continue working at introducing novel flavors and textures, despite the gag reflex (while being respectful of a child’s cues – remember to stop and try again later if a child gags on every bite or if the child turns away or clenches his teeth). Children who do not learn to eat textured foods by 8-9 months are more prone to persistent sensory food issues lasting into adulthood.

But what if your child does persist in gagging at every bite? This may be a sign of a hypersensitive gag reflex, in which case it would be worthwhile to ask your doctor about a referral to a multidisciplinary feeding therapy team that can evaluate causes of the difficulty and develop strategies for helping your child overcome these difficulties.

Categories B3RD, Tirzah Mae

Rice Cereal Time?

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Tirzah Mae had her “4 month” appointment today (Born five months ago and due 3 months ago) – and her doctor went through the standard four month advice, ending with “You can also start rice cereal now.”

To which Tirzah Mae’s dietitian mother answered, “Thanks but no thanks.”

Despite what your next door neighbor, the label on the baby cereal, and maybe even your family doc says, you do not need to introduce solids at 4 months. Most babies don’t need anything but breastmilk or infant formula until they’re six months old – and both breastfed and formula fed infants are at a disadvantage if they start solids too early.

For breastfed infants, the risk of adding solids before six months is related to what we breastfeeding people call the “virgin gut”. As long as Tirzah Mae is only receiving breastmilk, her gut has a protective layer (a simplified explanation that isn’t precisely correct, sorry!) that practically sheds pathenogenic bacteria and other icky stuff. Once that layer has been broken, baby can get sick more easily (now, don’t get me wrong – this does not mean that breastmilk is no longer beneficial after the gut’s barrier has been broken – keep breastfeeding even if you introduced solids prematurely!) The longer the breastfed baby waits before breaking that barrier, the better off she is – to a point. That point is right about 6 months , when an infant’s iron stores from birth are depleted and she needs some extra iron (this is why iron fortified infant cereal is recommended as baby’s first food).

For the formula fed infant, there’s no gut barrier to break – it’s been broken long ago (after that first two ounces of formula), but that doesn’t mean that we should be gung-ho about starting those solids right at four months. A few babies are developmentally ready at four months – but the vast majority develop the head and neck control needed to safely eat solids later. And introducing solids too soon can risk replacing the relatively nutrient-rich formula baby has been receiving with the (mostly) “empty calories” of (most) “Stage 1” baby foods (as well as increase risk of allergies).

So, when SHOULD you start solids?

If you’re breastfeeding your baby, when your baby shows signs of developmental readiness, no sooner than six months. If you’re formula feeding, when your baby shows signs of developmental readiness, no sooner than four months.

What are these signs of developmental readiness I speak of? I’m so glad you asked.

First, your baby should be sitting up with minimal support. This means with a pillow behind him – not strapped into a seat with a five point harness or sitting in a Bumbo.

Second, your baby should be able to hold his head steady and make controlled head movements in the sitting position. If I had a dime for every parent who has told me their two week old already has great head control… Remember, I said “in the sitting position”.

Finally, your baby should open his mouth wide for a spoon of food and close it once the spoon’s inside. If your baby is still sticking out his tongue when the spoon touches his lips, he’s not ready for solids. His tongue is under reflexive control – it needs to be under his control before he starts eating solids.

As for Tirzah Mae? We’ll be breastfeeding with nothing else added at LEAST for another month (six months from her birthday) but probably closer to three more months (until six months after her due date).