Baby Food: First Foods - A Focus on Fat

We feed our family based mostly off of the Weston A Price way of thinking. 
We focus on a lot of animal fats and nutrient dense foods.

Unlike the Keto or Paleo diets, we eat grains and legumes, but are careful to ferment or sprout them and cook them in home made bone broth. 

We also eat a tremendous amount of raw dairy and lots of fermented foods. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How We USED To Feed Our Babies

When my twins were born I followed the traditional American advice and fed them white (or brown) processed rice cereals first, then implemented purred fruit and veggies that came in a jar from the store. 

I did this with my following kids, but mostly made homemade baby food such as purred rice, homemade applesauce and steamed purred veggies, until Aryeh (my 5th). 

While nursing him I was not able to eat any gluten or dairy. He had horrendous colic. I mean he'd just scream for 5-8 hours like he was in pain every single day! He broke out in rashes all the time.

When he started eating baby food, he had reactions to everything he ate, especially fruits. I thought for sure he had a long list of allergies. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Change

When we started to really focus on healing our daughters teeth (surprise, surprise... they are horrible), and we knuckled down on a different way of eating, we read many books and began studying traditional ways of cooking. Alex (my husband) was a great help since in Africa they eat a more traditional diet... at least for the most part (The Western way of eating is everywhere now).

Anyway, Evelyn (baby #6) has had spit up problems her whole baby life. Her acid reflux had a direct link between my eating of commercial dairy. When I ate all raw milk, she was fine. When I ate commercially processed cheese, she'd vomit after every feeding.

With her we introduced bone broths as her first food. 
She moved on to avocados and egg yokes, progressing to whole eggs.
Then we moved to meats, include liver (which we try to eat once a week as a family). 
She progressed into eating curries, soups, and stir fries  with some properly fermented and cooked brown rice. 
After a while of those things we introduced bananas and some fruits such as applesauce.

Now she is 6 months and eats literally whatever we eat with absolutely no problem. I don't puree food for her at all, unless its applesauce or squash that I've already canned for her. She eats rice and steal cut oats, stir fry and soup with sourdough bread and raw butter.

Oh and she has NO teeth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our Belief Now

It's humorous to me now, looking back, that doctors recommend processed rice cereal and fruits as first foods. 

Babies need so much fat to develop their growing brains, muscles, bones, teeth... all their crucial development in the first few months and years. The very last thing they need is processed "cereal" and only God knows what's actually in that jar of baby food.

In Liberia (where Alex is from) babies eat rice and "soup" (some sort of oil and meat based sauce) from a very early age. African dishes are very high in minerals from the bones of animals and usually Palm Oil which is very high in vitamins A & D. Meat is, of course, always with the bones in and cooked over an open fire for a very long time. This is the focus on their diet, as is many people groups all over the world. Fresh vegetables are sometimes picked and included in meals. Fruits are not a focus, but enjoyed as a treat now and again. 

Evelyn eats twice a day now and is the happiest baby I think I've ever had! 

Here is a quick tip to making applesauce fattier and easier for baby to digest:

We firmly believe in this system of feeding babies:

Start with bone broths in a bottle

Add avocados and egg yokes (it's the whites that people are allergic to)

Progress to meats (chew them up for your baby)

Add root veggies (carrots, potatoes, beets ect) with fat added (coconut oil, tallow, broth, butter)

Add fruits low in pectin (berries, bananas ect)

Add grains properly fermented and cooked in broth with fat added

Add high pectin fruits but mix with fats

Like I said, our baby at 6 months now eats whatever we eat. 

And since we eat in the way listed above...

It's easy peasy.