PFB BLW question

[HellomynameisIcklePickle]

Gave my boy some reduced sugar & salt baked beans this morning and he loved them! Are they ok for once/twice a week?

[ThePequod]

I'm no expert but I would certainly say so! Yes, there's a bit of sugar and salt in the sauce BUT useful protein and iron in the beans. Give a clementine with them so that the vitamin C in the fruit will aid absorption of iron. Baked beans are easy to mash onto fingers of toast as well if your son is into that sort of thing!

My DD enjoys baked beans once a week or so. She'd happily eat them cold

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

Yes, they are fine

[JELT]

This made me laugh- I did blw for my dd1, was a complete disaster and she refused to eat most foods-proper throwing everything on the floor and screaming. Ended up trring beans for her at 9 months and she LOVED them, then followed 6 weeks of me filled with guilt for feeding her low sugar baked beans almost everyday as it was ALL she would eat apart from cereal or bananas. She's now a healthy 4 year old who'll eat anything thrown at her so go for it I say!

[JELT]

PS I used to mix then into everything- meat balls, mashed on toast or potato balls with other veg. I think they're a great protein addition to foods.

[Rhododendron]

DD was very keen on beans as a baby (still is). We don't use tins, but instead cook our own: buy dried beans (very cheap), soak in cold water for the day, boil for an hour or so. Add a tomato/onion/etc sauce (as though adding to beef mince for bolognese). So they have no sugar, salt or anything else unhealthy. Lentils are good too.

[mrsbug]

Yes, dd loves them

[SoftSheen]

Even the reduced sugar/salt beans actually still have quite a lot of salt in them, so yes ok for once or twice a week but not ideal for every day. And best not to serve them with something else which is also salty, such as sausage.

[mrsbug]

I was horrified at how salty bread from the supermarket is so when I weaned dd I got a bread maker and started making my own, with a lot less salt than the recipe said. This worried me more because we eat bread most days whereas beans are an occasional thing.

So when we do eat beans we balance it out by having them with low salt bread.

[HellomynameisIcklePickle]

Thanks everyone! It really felt like a PFB thing to ask but with things I generally have a good gauge on how healthy/not healthy most foods I feed are so I know how much to limit them (or not) but I was a bit lost on this one!

He thoroughly enjoyed them and now my DH has someone to share a tin with!

[mrscog]

My DS eats quite a few beans - if he's having a 'bean heavy' week I tend to drain them first so it's just a coating of the sauce rather than pools of it - especially as I just use normal beans.