Reading this article in the New York Times you would think that the US has just discovered the concept of introducing non-commercial baby food to babies... gasp... they can, and will, eat real food!
The author even contacted nutrition experts to make sure that feeding (appropriately pureéd) normal family food to babies was 'safe'. No, really:
To be safe, I consulted two pediatric nutrition specialists. Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the committee on nutrition for the American Academy of Pediatrics, liked the meal sharing idea. He said feeding a child a range of foods encourages the child to be more adventurous at the table as she moves into her second year.
“This is how you teach your baby to develop likes similar to yours,” he said. “Otherwise, how would an Indian child eat curry or a Mexican child consume salsa?”
No wonder the NYTimes Health section is always filled with articles on how to convince children to eat something other than chicken nuggets or macaroni cheese (from a packet too, I bet). They're weaned on bland shit and they develop a taste for bland shit. It's like food isn't food unless it's heavily processed and wrapped in plastic/canned/jarred/whatever. Scary.
When I was a baby my own parents brought me up on whatever they were eating- they joke that the second thing I ever learned to say was "Don't mash it!!!". What do people think humans did before the invention of canned baby food?
1 comment:
It has always been utterly beyond me why people feed babies baby food.
Hunter-gatherers feed babies food pre-chewed by an adult, and there's some evidence that helps babies digest the food. But babies all over the world (except in our weird Western culture) get what adults are eating - including curries etc - and there's also some evidence that the tastes they like are affected by what you eat when you're pregnant (apparently different foods make the amniotic fluid taste different, and foetuses drink quite a lot of it in their last couple of months in utero).
Post a Comment