If you’ve ever dealt with a baby with food sensitivities (and I’m guessing you have since you picked up this book), you know that having to play the guessing game as to which foods might be the offenders is exhausting. A miserable baby equals miserable parents equals a miserable home.
Between the two of us, Tanya and I have seven children and over a dozen years’ experience dealing with food sensitivities. We’ve battled everything from gluten to dairy to meats to artificial colors to sugar to preservatives.
The idea for this book was born while we were shooting images for The Good Living Guide to Medicinal Tea. Tanya’s sweet little boy Otis, then nine months or so, was hungry and needed to be fed. (Just for the record, Tanya also has a dog named Milo, and I strongly feel that everyone who reads this book should be privy to that information.) I offered to take over this task so Tanya could take photographs of flowers and herbs, and she agreed, handing me some sort of homemade concoction.
The baby food was definitely not store-bought stuff, and I knew Otis was very sensitive to gluten and dairy. (At her physician’s suggestion, Tanya had recently tried reintroducing gluten to little Otis’s diet, the consequence being an hour and a half of sleep within a thirty-six hour period.) Never one to skip eating something that looks interesting, I tasted it and was surprised—and not in the way that made me want to spit it into the sink. Good surprised. Like, I would have eaten it for breakfast myself!
Everyone who’s ever fed a child jarred baby food with the image of the smiling tot on the label knows that kid can’t really be eating the food, because let’s face it: most pre-packaged baby food is pretty gross. But this food was different . . . it was food. Turns out, it was a homemade mixture of oats, beets, raspberries, hemp hearts, and chia seeds.
And Otis was loving it.
So why do we bother buying all that store-bought crap? It’s essentially dead food, anyway. It’s been boiled, strained, sealed, and shelved for months before your precious little person begrudgingly chokes it down. There’s no nutritional value left at this point. What are we thinking? Would we want to eat it?
Nope.
I’m not blaming parents, by the way. At the time this sentence is being written, my daughter is six, my little dude is eight, and my man-child is fifteen (he’s currently six feet two and has the hairiest legs I’ve ever seen—and this will happen to your babies, too). If I had known then what I know now about our food industry, how we’re marketed to, and how many babies out there develop sensitivities that can be controlled by eating carefully chosen and prepared food, I would have executed each of their first two years a little differently. All I can do now is apply the knowledge I currently have and feed them accordingly. But YOU—you might be able to start from the very beginning, which Tanya and I both firmly believe is such a gift.
What we choose to feed our new little babies early in life can have a profound effect on their future health and well-being. By sidestepping the foods that create the greatest problems, you give your child a massive boost in both health and increased immunity while lessening the chances of them developing food allergies, asthma, hay fever, skin disorders, growth stunts, migraines, and more. By providing them with better nourishment, you create an environment in which they can thrive, and you truly give them the very best chance for optimal growth and stability.
Ironically, many foods that contribute to infantile colic, gas, stomach distress, growth impairment, behavior problems, and other health concerns are those pushed by the food industry. Dairy is undeniably correlated with childhood asthma and allergies. Refined sugar and artificial colors are deemed responsible for various behavior issues. Many preservatives found in infant formula are considered extremely toxic in larger doses, and the soy in those same formulas is almost certainly genetically modified.
The goal of this book is to educate and empower new (or not so new) parents to feed their babies a diet high in just plain nourishment and to reap the rewards of using foods that will help their sensitive babies; not inadvertently make those sensitivities worse. Food sensitivities don’t need to be part of your child’s life. It’s not just some unfortunate stage to be eventually outgrown. They are preventable and controllable. Certain foods might hurt, but many foods absolutely heal.
The trick is to know which foods upset our bodies, and which ones give us life and nourishment.
If the food you’re eating is alive or was alive within the last couple of days, then it will contribute to growth and health. If the food hasn’t been alive for more than a week or so, it has much less to contribute. By eating fresh, whole, local, great-quality foods, you are optimizing your health in ways you can’t by any other method. By removing the common offenders and learning how to formulate homemade baby foods that your child will happily gulp down without the threat of reaction, your whole family will benefit. This book will give you the tools to create simple foods that will feed your baby’s soul.
So what are we waiting for? Let’s nosh!
