One of the most important goals of every parent is to grow a healthy baby. But, what is the best Baby’s Feeding Tips? As a mother, I’m trying every day to do my best in preparing food not only for my daughter but for the whole family. I convicted that, if we eat, in health in our families, we will raise healthy children.

What is the First Step To Feed our Baby Healthily?

The work of a mother to raise a healthy baby begins in her pregnancy. The way the mother feeds herself and cares for the baby growing inside her are the first steps in the journey to raising a healthy baby. The baby is introduced to the mother’s womb with food as it tastes different tastes of food through the amniotic fluid and after being born through breast milk (when breastfed).

Eating healthy does not mean being careful only with the quality and the kind of food, but also with the portion of food you consume. During pregnancy, I tried to be very careful as I could expect to embrace my daughter. But when it comes to fruit consumption, convinced that they have high levels of vitamins, and are among the healthiest foods, I knew no limit.

The fruits are tasty and healthy, but they contain high levels of sugar as well as vitamins. I continued eating many fruits every day until I diagnosed with gestational diabetes at the end of the second trimester of pregnancy.

Luckily, it was recent gestational diabetes that confirmed that I had been over-consuming fruit. The doctor asked me to start insulin immediately, but I asked for a few days to try to normalize my high level of glycemia through diet.

What Does it Happen Next?

I received the right guidelines, and I start a new way of nutrition. I should measure the level of glycemia before and after each meal. I began to study how each food in my body reacted and eliminated any that caused the increased level of glycemia in my blood.
The nutrition mainly based on protein-based foods (legumes, eggs, meat, and milk) and vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, etc.). I ate minimum consumption of high carbohydrate foods (carbohydrates turn into sugars during digestion) and only one or two fruits a day (different kinds, for example, ½ apple and ½ orange). I continued every day like this, and at the end of the second week level of glycemia normalized.

I ate healthily every day of my third quarterly of pregnancy. In this way, I ended up having a healthy pregnancy for myself and the baby. I kept my weight constant by adding only 10 kg to my initial weight and gave birth to a healthy baby (2.9 kg). Only with healthy nutrition without the help of insulin.
I shared this personal story because I convicted that our babies take the good and the bad manners from us, and that certainly applies to the way that we feed our babies, too.
How we present ourselves to our baby? How do we decide to feed them?

What kind of cooking techniques do we use for preparing the food for our babies? Are we feed them with fresher, cook on steam and baked food, or are cooked fried and sugary food for our kids?
I’m going to share below a guideline for healthy nutrition. Some of the main issues I will stop below are the benefits of healthy food, consequences of malnutrition at babies, the best way to prepare healthy food for our kids, and how to educate them for a healthier nutrition lifestyle, etc.

Baby’s feeding tips – Benefits of healthy nutrition at our babies

Baby Growth: A healthy diet is very significant for our baby’s growth. The healthiest nourishment considers which is rich in fruits, veggies, diet proteins, low-fat products, and rich fibers. Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins and minerals. If we feed our child with a diet rich in healthy products, his brain and body will grow healthy. Kids will have strong bones and teeth, and their senses and vital organs will grow properly.

Baby Development: The first years of a baby’s life are very significant for his development. In childhood, children develop very fast, so this period is substantial for good mental and physical health in adulthood. Nutrition is important in the emotional and psychic state of a person, both adult and child. Unhealthy diets are the cause of many mental and physical health problems. In recent studies, the ten foods that have a positive impact on mental health were: carrots, bananas, apples, dark leafy greens like spinach, green salad, citrus, fresh berries, cucumber and kiwi, black grapes, and blueberries.

Prevent Health Problem: Healthy nutrition is necessary for preventing health problems, be it mental or physical. The kids that eat healthily are more protected from diseases like overweight, diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, etc. Healthy food helps kids for a healthy psychological state, stabilize their energy, improve their minds, adjust their mood, help kids maintain a healthy weight, and helps prevent mental health conditions. These include depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Kids can have a better mood and can be more social.

Malnutrition in children, consequences for their development

Kids are different in the way they approach food. When we introduce solid foods to our children, we may have difficulty feeding until children are accustomed to new tastes. A baby’s daily diet must contain at least five different types of vegetables and fruits, legumes, meat, eggs, and dairy products.
Besides the quality and variety of foods, we should take care of the number of daily calories, too. Children need a certain amount of calories to grow and develop. But if a baby gets more calories than he uses, the body stores those extra calories as fat.
Obesity is one of the most problems that kids affected if they eat in a not healthy way. Some of the diseases that overweight children risked are:
• Diabetes
• heart diseases
• blood high pressure
• high cholesterol
• some types of cancer
• asthma
• liver and arthritis problems
• sleep disorders

Health food and physical activity recommended to cure obesity and prevent the other disease that the kids risked. Play with your kids. Throw around a football; go cycling, skating, or swimming; take family walks and hikes.
Help your kids find activities they enjoy by showing them different possibilities
Pay attention to the warning signs of an eating disorder. These include excessive calories, anxiety about body-weight, not eating at all, etc.

The risk of anxiety and depression in kids is another problem. Avoid foods that impact the child’s mood and increase the risk of distress, such as processed food, fried food, sweet desserts, sugary snack, refined flour, and cereal. The use of four or more soda or sweetened fruit drinks a day has a higher risk of depression. Caffeine from soda, energy drinks, or coffee drinks can increase anxiety in kids.

Wisely replace unhealthy foods that are friendly for your child.

• • • It is better, in place of French fries to cook baked potatoes. Another healthy alternative to cooking potato is potato’s puree and baked croquette potato, or meatball with potato. In this way, you can convert any unhealthy food.
    • Replace ice-cream with frozen yogurt, sorbets with fruits, fresh fruit smoothies.
    • Replace Fried Chicken with baked or grilled chicken.
    • Replace Cakes or deserts with oat muffins, cakes with less sugar, or honey cookies.
    • Replace chips with baked veggies chips.

For those “kids who don’t put anything in their mouths,” recommendations are that children are left free to eat what they want except at specific times, fully the calories they need. We must let free our kids in these cases, but always to give them to choose between the varieties of healthy foods.
In children, there is a control mechanism that regulates the absorption of calories for 24 hours. A plenteous meal will follow with a lighter one.

How to educate our children to have a healthier nutrition lifestyle.

As parents, we should educate our kids to live healthily, and of course, this includes the method of feeding, too. How to build good habits for our children? Find below some tips about it.

Start the day with a healthy breakfast, which considers one of the most important meals. Kids must eat breakfast, riches in protein, which helps kids to feel satiated for a longer time. Dairy produce, peanut butter, eggs, cereals, apples, are some of the foods recommended for a healthy breakfast. Prepare for your children a variety and different breakfast each day, in the way that kids began the day healthy and fed.

Make meals a priority. We should teach our kids respect for the food and the importance that they have every meal for their health. Find below some of the manner that we use and the benefits of this process.

• • • To sit together at the table. The child must sit at the table with the other members of the family to consume the meals. Children should eat at the table and with the TV off. Since when we start feeds our baby will solid food after the first six months of the baby’s life, we should educate him to sit in his chair.
      In this way, we monitored their way of eating and can educate them on the proper ways to eat politely and healthily. Eating together creates the opportunity to talk with our children. Show interest in what is happening in their lives. Tell them what’s going on in ours. Build stronger bonds between your family members.
    • Eat and cook healthy. Best to set a personal example for children by cooking and eating healthy foods in the family. After the first year of life, children begin to dislike soups or purees. They want to try new foods, so healthy cooking for the whole family also helps educate the child to start eating cooked food in pieces.

Rules to keep in mind

• • Teach children to eat fruits and vegetables in between the main mealtimes. Kids like most to eat junk food (cakes, chocolate, chips, etc.) in between meals. We need to educate them differently. One of the best things to do is to prepare snack food with fruits and veggies that are the healthiest food for our kids.
  • Keep in plenty of fruits and veggies in our refrigerator, and to prepare healthy snacks and beverages for our kids (water, milk, fresh fruit juice, or smoothies) better than buying beverages and foods with added sugar and fat, like soda, chips, chocolate, etc.
  • Make your fruits and veggies more attractive to your child. It is better to expose previously washed fruits in places where children can easily take them home. Make sure there is a variety of fruits so that your child will want to try new fruits. Keep away, and don’t buy unhealthy foods.
  • Apply a varied diet. Foods should be high in fiber and cereal and chewable to protect teeth from caries and oral disease pathologies. Starting in the second half of the first year of life, we have to teach our baby to chew. Depending on the appearance of the teeth, we should offer them unprocessed fruits such as apples, pears, etc., or vegetables such as carrots, cucumbers, celery, etc. that children like and help them to develop their teeth.
  • Kids should eat more whole and unprocessed food, less packaged and processed food. Better to cook healthy food to awaken the child’s desire to eat. You can cook smart dishes and combine your products for more lovely receipts. For example, you can add potatoes or carrots to meat dishes or cook veggies with pasta, or rise receipts. Prepare puree or meatballs veggies receipts.
  • Cook more meals at home and avoid fast food. Choose healthy food for your child If you should eat at the restaurant together.
    • Skip junk food. Take a bag of fruit and vegetable instead of fried food.
    • Suggest your child go for the smallest size of the portion of the food.
    • To substitute junk food with healthy food choices.
    • Better to eat protein food such as chicken and vegetables than carbohydrate food.
    • Instead of fried, hot-dogs, and cakes, it is better to eat grilled veggies, salads, baked potato, and fruit slices.
  • Moderate portion and size. Don’t insist that your child finish all the food on the plate. His stomach is like his fist. The child should eat as two fists in a meal.

Involve the children in the nutrition process

Take your kids with you and engage them to help you buy food and choose the foods to eat. They can also help to cook meals and get some merit in what they are eating, for example, with their small hand can chop lettuce.

Having fun preparing healthy receipts like fruits, salad, fruit and veggies snacks, etc.

Another fun way to get your child involved is to plant a garden. Growing some of your favorite fruits, vegetables, and herbs can teach your children valuable lessons. Planting, storing, and harvesting your food is enjoyable. It can be a complementary experience to the child and the adults as well.

Avoid the use of sugary food and refined carbs in the child diet

Uses of refined carbohydrates cause dangerous spikes in blood sugar and fluctuations in mood and energy. They had stripped of all bran, fiber, and nutrients—such as white bread, pizza dough, pasta, pastries, white flour, white rice, and many breakfast kinds of cereals.

Complex carbs, on the other hand, are usually high in nutrients and fiber and are digested slowly, providing longer-lasting energy. They include whole-wheat or multigrain bread, high-fiber cereals, brown rice, beans, nuts, fruit, and non-starchy vegetables.

A child’s body gets all the sugar it needs from that naturally occurring in food, like bread, fruits, dairy, etc. Added sugar contribute to hyperactivity, mood disorders, and increase the risk of obesity and many other diseases that we have mention above.

Some tips to reduce sugar

Eat more fruits. Fruits have natural sugar (fructose). Recommend the child to eat more fruit and to satisfy his attention to sugar. Prepare fruit cakes. Prepare smoothies and fruit juice instead of a milky drink, prepare Popsicle handles freezing fresh juice, or make frozen fruit.

Do not stop sweets. Completely stopping the child from consuming sweets is not a good idea, as it may make the child more desirable to them. A better thing to do is to cook the cakes rarely and to use less white sugar or replace sugar with brown sugar and other sweeteners, such as honey, agave syrup, stevia, maple syrup.

Modify Recipes. Try reducing the amount of white sugar by half and deciding how it turns out.

Avoid sugary drinks. It recommended that a child can use not more than 12 grams of sugar per day (3 teaspoons). You should know the amount of sugar in the product that you buy, before that your child to consume it.

Be wise about how to use fat in your cooks

Healthy fats are a significant part of our diet. They help us to satiate and stay satiated. They also affect our brain well, improve memory, and boost mood. The key is to make sure your kids are eating the right fats.

Healthy fats are unsaturated fats. They are known as monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fat.
Monounsaturated fats are in olive oil, avocados, nuts (like almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans), and seeds (such as pumpkin, sesame).

Polyunsaturated fats include omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish, like salmon, herring, tuna, and sardines, and on the flaxseed and walnuts.

Unhealthy fats are Tran’s fats. These can found in some margarine, crackers, candies, cookies, snack foods, fried foods, baked goods, and other processed foods made with “partially hydrogenated” vegetable oils (even if they claim to be trans-fat-free.

How to educate our child to eat new foods

Offer new food not only for the child for all the family. If we demonstrate to the child that this food is delicious, he will be more willing to enjoy it. Try when he is hungry and limit snacks uses during the day. Present only one new food at a time.

Make it fun cutting the food into unusual shapes, or create a food collage. Serve new foods with favorite foods to increase acceptance. Have your child help prepare meals. In this way, he will be more willing to eat something they helped to make.

Keep our children safe. What to keep in mind when buying food for our kids?

The best nutritional diets for our children are those that contain a variety of foods on the daily menu, rich in fruits, greens, vegetables, legumes, protein-based foods, whole grains, etc. But most important is that all the food used balanced in their combination and the amounts used.

Preparing a healthy meal starts with the quality of the foods we buy to cook the meal for our baby. If you do not have the opportunity to grow organic products like fruits and vegetables in your garden, find below some tips for how to choose and offer healthy food with a moderate budget to your child.

• • Always choose fresh foods for your baby. Fruits and vegetables are the sources of vitamins and mineral salts, so we need to be sure they are crisp and organic or conventionally grown.
  • Skip food grown with pesticides and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), cause they damage our child’s physical and mental development. The development of the child is very significant in the early years of his life.
  • For better quality and price, buy organic products at the farmer’s markets.
  • Use more season fruits and vegetables. In this way, you can find them fresher and less expensive. Freezing or packaged products have conservators and added chemicals for longer storage.
  • In your child’s diet, use organic fruits and vegetables that you can eat without peeling, like strawberries, cherry, berries, green leafy vegetables, lettuce, baby spinach, tomatoes, and apples. If you choose conventional fruit, and vegetables than try to find with thick-skinned such as citrus, oranges, bananas, and avocados.
  • Wash the fruits and vegetables in the right way. You can use baking soda or vinegar for a better washing of fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables must rest for a few minutes in the water with vinegar and then rinse in running water.
  • Choose organic meat from poultry or cattle grown and fed with natural food, like grass. Organic food is safer and more nutritious. When you find an organic farm that raises chicken or cow, make sure to take from that not only the meat for your kid but also the dairy products and eggs.
  • Dairy products are very substantial for our kid’s growth. Milk is one of the most important of this category. After that, you will stop breastfeeding, be sure that your baby to drink organic milk. It is safer and very nourishing.
  • When you buy fish, choose it fresh, with a high value of Omega 3 and DHA, and a low presence of mercury, such as light tuna, sardine, salmon, trout, and herring. Other kinds of fishes recommended as the best choices for our kids are shrimp, cod, catfish, crab, scallops, pollock, tilapia, whitefish, perch, flounder, sole, anchovy, crawfish, clams, oyster, and lobster. To avoid a high presence of mercury are tilefish, shark, swordfish, king mackerel, orange roughly, marlin, bigeye & bluefin tuna.

Baby’s feeding tips – what do I need for preparing healthy food for my baby

Food processors help us prepare healthy meals for our children, besides raw organic foods. Fortunately for us, there are many quality models on the market that provide us with the opportunity to prepare high quality and fresh food for our baby. Food makers can blend food without losing its nutritional value.
Below will find some of the main features that we should keep in mind when we buy the food maker.

• • Simply and easy to use. Food processor must allow us to Steam, Sterilize, Cook, Juice, Warm, Defrost, Puree, and Chop, for helping us to create fresh, healthy, homemade baby food with the touch of a button.
  • Easy to clean. Best food makers are sterilizing and self-cleans. The stirring cup to be dishwasher and the water tanks to be easy to clean.
  • Varied usage options. Food makers must be locked in nutrients, flavor, and vitamins, ensuring healthy food for the baby. Suitable for all vegetables, fruits, meat, chicken, and fish.
  • Time savvier. To have a large capacity for cooking multiple servings at a time. In this way, we feed our baby in time and save most time for ourselves.
  • Stylish and modern design for a better fit with your kitchen and interior style.
  • Safety first. The brand and product must approve by the FDA. The product must produce from material that is tested and certified, BPA-free, PVC-free, phthalate-free, and lead-free.
  • The product warranty is security for your money.

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I hope to have been helpful with this article in the Best Baby’s feeding tips.
Feel free to leave any comments or questions below.