Introducing Solid Foods

 

When your baby is about six months old she will probably be ready for solid foods. You want to wait until she can stay vertical—holding her head steady and sitting upright without support—so that she can swallow well and avoid choking.

But what foods do you introduce first? Do you start with easy-to-digest foods, such as rice cereal? And do you worry about foods that are more likely to trigger an allergic reaction?

Competing Opinions

Perspective #1: Solid foods should be offered in an order that’s gentler on an infant’s digestive system, beginning with cereals, then fruits, vegetables, and finally the harder-to-digest proteins. Make sure, too, to avoid or at least delay the introduction of common allergens, like wheat, eggs, fish, and peanut and milk products.

Perspective #2: When your baby is ready for solid foods, you can introduce a variety of foods without stressing her digestive system. There’s no hard-and-fast rule that you need to introduce cereals first, or that you need to worry about allergens.

What the Science Says

IN THE PAST, parents were counseled to introduce their infants first to an easy-to-digest and non-allergenic diet, then work their way toward other, “complementary” solid foods. More recently, though, research studies and health organizations are suggesting that parents not worry about the order in which solid foods are introduced. Instead, the AAP says that there’s no medical evidence that supports beginning with, say, single-grain cereals. Obviously, you should be mindful of choking hazards, and if there’s a history of allergy in your family, you should be especially careful and communicate with your pediatrician. But generally speaking, babies can eat a variety of foods—infant cereals, fruits and vegetables, grains, proteins, and yogurts and cheeses—and the order does not matter.

Some people will tell you that you should begin with vegetables before fruits because once you introduce the sweeter fruits there will be no going back to less exciting veggies. But this may be an old wives’ tale; there’s no evidence that babies who have fruits first will end up disliking vegetables. It also doesn’t appear that the order in which you choose to introduce foods will affect whether your baby has a strong desire for sweets. Babies, like all of us, are typically born with that preference.

When it comes to the best time to introduce solid foods, after six months you can do so with certainty. Earlier than that and there’s a bit of scientific murkiness. For example, one study warns against beginning too early, finding that introducing solids before four months of age is associated with childhood obesity, but other studies are finding definite benefits (such as reduced allergy risk and greater willingness to try new foods) to introducing certain solids as early as four months. At this point the research isn’t clear on this question, so the majority of experts still recommend exclusive nursing for the first six months of a child’s life. Still, the AAP notes that “when infants double their birth weight (typically at about 4 months of age) and weigh about 13 pounds or more, they may be ready for solid foods.”

As for the question of potentially allergenic foods after six months, the short answer is that you don’t have to worry about it. I’ve discussed the question more fully in the entry “Food Allergens and Early Exposure,” but suffice it to say that you can, and probably should, be introducing your baby to foods that parents used to shy away from, like peanuts, fish, and eggs. Doing so seems to actually prevent those food allergies.

The Bottom Line

IF YOUR BABY can sit up and bring objects to her mouth, she’s likely ready to have her diet expanded to include solid foods. Assuming you’re avoiding choking hazards and paying attention to family patterns related to allergies, you can relax and feel free to offer her a variety of foods from different food groups.

Keep in mind that when introducing your baby to solid foods, you’re laying the groundwork for how she feels about eating and mealtime. You’re introducing her to her relationship with food and laying tracks of association in her brain. If mealtimes with your baby are full of parental frustration, anger, or punitiveness (I recently heard about a parent flicking the cheek of an infant if the child drops food), your child may associate eating or mealtimes with something that’s unpleasant to be avoided. If you want to create in your infant healthy associations with food and eating with the family, then make sure you’re creating a positive environment.