Organic, calcium-fortified, high antioxidants, no nitrates . . . argh! It is so easy to get overwhelmed by the simple task of going to the supermarket. The act of eating literally consumes us: three meals a day plus snacks. Add in shopping, preparing, and cleaning up, and you have nearly a full-time job just to feed your family. And yet, hard as it is to imagine, this job has gotten increasingly easy. Yes, I did say easy. On one hand, we have never had so many food choices or such ease in obtaining high-quality, delicious foods. On the other, we have never had so many food dilemmas—starting from the earliest age.
I am a pediatrician who grew up in a family of foodies. When I began my pediatric training 20 years ago, I followed the guidelines fed to me: Start rice cereal at 4 to 6 months, wait four to five days before introducing a fruit or vegetable; begin proteins at 9 months. As a young doctor, I became uncomfortable repeating this rhetoric. As time went on, I looked back on my upbringing and began combining the experiences I had in my childhood with the information I was learning from the ethnically diverse patient population I was seeing on a daily basis. The families that I knew growing up in New York City all ate ethnic foods, and their children were expected to do the same. My family tradition was Sunday night dinner in Chinatown. As a treat we would go to the lower east side for Indian food. Little Italy was always a favorite. I remember my youngest sister, eight years my junior sitting in a highchair, her face and hands covered in smashed won-tons. These early memories shaped my ideas about the importance of exposing children to different types of foods before they begin to reject them.
Dietary trends and food fads come and go, and the most recent guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have reversed much of what I was taught during my training. But I wondered, what did people in other countries do? After all, children around the globe eat, grow, and thrive.
After my residency training, I joined a private practice in Santa Monica and had the continued good fortune of meeting families from all over the world. I asked mothers and fathers from diverse backgrounds, “What are the first foods given in your culture?” I was surprised by some of the answers. I learned that in Vietnam babies are fed a broth made of vegetables and then, later, of meat. As the baby grows, the broth becomes thicker and more substantial. In Sweden all babies eat a special porridge, which is such an important baby food in Swedish culture that the many Swedish families I took care of (nearly the entire Swedish population in Los Angeles!) would have it shipped to them. All these families taught me so much! As time passed, I evolved a hybrid philosophy of early feeding practices. Yes, I still start with rice cereal or a fruit or a vegetable, and I do recommend waiting a few days before introducing the next new food. But after a baby has experimented with a handful of simple foods, I feel comfortable exposing her to a wider selection of flavors and then textures. The more I learned about babies’ diets from around the world, the more I realized that the rigid approach to early feeding practiced by American families leads to the diet of pizza and hot dogs preferred by so many children. Along the way, I had the opportunity to practice what I preached with my own two children who became my own living, eating lab rats.
Twenty years later I have built a pediatric practice that takes a holistic approach to all aspects of child-rearing, especially feeding and nutrition. I have always felt that part of my job as a pediatrician is not just to teach families the logistics of starting solid foods, but to have a dialogue about planning adventuresome meals that will enhance a child’s physical, psychosocial, and emotional development.
Picky eating, obesity, and eating disorders are just some of the common food issues facing American families these days. I believe that Smart Bites for Baby is a wonderful first step in getting us on track to solve these problems. Infancy and early childhood are fantastic periods of growth and development. Infants will double their birth weight at about 4 months of age and triple it at a year! Imagine if we continued to gain weight at that pace—we would have 180-pound three-year-olds! During this crucial period of growth, the nervous system is rapidly myelinating (insulating), which requires cholesterol and fat as building blocks. The developing brain goes through an amazing process, akin to pruning a tree, reinforcing crucial neural connections and obliterating redundant ones. Exposing young children to healthy, tasty, flavorful foods stimulates the brain and offers a veritable feast. During this period, untold numbers of neural pathways are established that lay the foundation of how we will respond to a lifetime of sensory input.
We are due for a revolution in pediatric nutrition. Being attuned to developmental cues, introducing foods with varied colors and textures, and stimulating the palate from an early age are a smart approach to feeding your children and are the underlying principles in Mika Shino’s Smart Bites for Baby. Introducing meals that incorporate global flavors and textures is not only enriching, it can foster a lifetime of good eating habits. With the help of Smart Bites for Baby, we can raise a healthier, happier next generation.