When do babies liver/kidneys develop?

[SamraLee]

I wasn't really sure where to post this, but when can a baby's liver handle alcohol and when can their kidneys handle salt? So I can cook with wine or a stock cube, for example. I saw somewhere that said you shouldn't add salt to an infants food until they are 1 years old, but everything is always 1 year old, so when they turn one do all their organs just magically develop overnight? I can't really find anything about giving babies alcohol obviously. Anyone have any ideas?

[flatmum]

I was under the impression that when you add wine to a sauce fr example and then cook it further that the alcohol boils off, but I could be wrong. I certainly used to add a bit if red wine to bolognaise and pasta sauce from around the year mark. I don't really know about salt but I'm sure a pinch in cooking would be fine from a year of thereabouts?

[SamraLee]

Alcohol never really boils off completely even after 3 hours there is still 5% left. My husband and I are first time parents so overly cautious. Hm, I just wish I could find a concrete answer. Maybe I'll ask the doctor or health visitor, hopefully they won't think I'm too crazy !

[acebaby]

Gosh - I never knew that about the alcohol . My two DCs have lived to tell the tale, after years of leftover stew and risotto (both made with a fair amount of wine). I would have thought they would be fine with that from around a year. But do check if you are worried.

Bought stock cubes have loads of salt, and I wouldn't be particularly happy about my DCs having them now, even though they are 7 and 5, just because I don't want their palates becoming accustomed to salt. Having said that, they probably get them in school dinners. Perhaps you could make your own stock (it is very easy!), or buy fresh stock from the supermarket?

[lougle]

Thinking about it logically, though, the quantities are minute, SamraLee.

Take this Lamb, red wine and rosemary casserole by Nick Nairn.

It uses 300ml of chicken stock and 300ml of red wine.

The cooking time is 1-1½ hours.

This site says that after 1 hour cooking, 25% of the alcohol will remain. After 1½ hours, 20% of alcohol will remain.

Red wine has an Alcohol By Volume content of 12%, on average.

So, your 300ml of Red wine has 36mls of alcohol in it, before you cook it.

After 1 hour of cooking, only 25% of that will remain - 9mls.
After 1½ hours of cooking, only 20% remains - 7.2mls.

That means that the entire dish will contain just over a teaspoon of alcohol.

The dish serves 4 adults. Each adult, if shared equally, would get around 2mls of alcohol.

A 1 year old is going to eat a tiny proportion of the meal. Perhaps ⅛ of an adult portion?

That would take the baby's portion down to 0.25mls of alcohol.

I think any liver will cope with that!

[lougle]

That was meant to read 'perhaps 1/8 of an adult portion?'

With regard to stock cubes - one Oxo stock cube contains 1.05g (beef), 1.23g (chicken and vegetable) and 0.88g (lamb) per 100ml of stock, if you follow the instructions exactly.

Let's use the recipe above. You need 300ml stock. It's a lamb casserole, so use lamb stock cube.

3 x 0.88= 2.64g of salt - half a teaspon in the entire dish.

Divide that by the 4 adult portions - 0.66g of salt.

Divide an adult portion by 8 (presuming the baby will have 1/8 of an adult portion) = 0.0825g of salt.

Again, that's a teeny amount.

By the way - if you give your child a slice of white bread, they will have 0.37g of salt. That's 5 times as much as the stock cubes you are worrying about

[SamraLee]

Thank you very much! Those answers were very helpfuul and I'll show them to my husband. I really appreciate you taking the time to go through it.

[acebaby]

oooh thanks Lougle! I will relax about stock cubes. In general though, I do worry about salt in processed food.