to give my daughter chocolate?

[SpiraelingSnowflakes]

Ok, a brief bit of background first!

DD is a week shy of 6 months old. She is a bottomless pit hungry baby and enjoys 10+ long BF's per day alongside 3 healthy meals of porridge/fruit/vegetables/yoghurt/etc. Spoon fed currently, but I'm planning on doing a combo with BLW imminently.

For Christmas, we are going down to visit my parents (weather permitting). A few weeks ago my Mum suggested letting my DD have her first taste of chocolate on Christmas Day. She proposed some chocolate buttons.

I countered this with suggesting just one chocolate button, melted (and allowed to cool!) into some baby porridge. As a one-off special treat for Christmas, rather than becoming a regular meal-!

AIBU to allow chocolate at all?

Apparently, the liver is not ready to process it at such an early age. That's what paediatricians tell us here.

Really? I've never heard that here. In fact the only warnings I've heard on chocolate involve dogs! Whereabouts do you live?

DD2 is now 8 months & has ben happily chomping her way through her advent calendar this month with no il effects. DD1 insisted her sister have one too.

Both kids weaned on whatever we were eating including being offered pudding - we found the giant chocolate buttons easier to grip & so suck on (so less of a chocking hazard). One is enough but it seems to make them both happy & makes a fantastic mess.

There are no good or bad foods, just things to beveaten in different quantities. Have a fab & sticky Christmas

i did blw with ds2, at 7 1/2months he devoured half my magnum ice cream. he was raging that me, hubby and ds1 were eating ice cream and he wasn't. he has gone on to eat anything and everything we were eating, particularly if it's junk food.

Porcamiseria

Wow isn't it sad how in your world someone who has a Personal opinion on something is described as po-faced!

If anyone is being po-faced it isn't me or the OP! Honestly...

Msklo

made me laugh when you said don't give dc's the taste for sweetness. How sweet is fruit then. No wonder your bairn is chomping it down.
Taste breastmilk, it is so sweet.

Can't stop laughing over the sheer madness of this thread. Pure delusion.

Well I didn't really give my eldest dd much chocolate at all until she was over two. Now she likes chocolate but doesn't crave it or overdo it. My younger dd however had chocolate from much earlier as I relaxed my standards with her. Would have been over 6 months but possibly before a year old. She now craves chocolate and sweets and can't get enough of it. (She was bf a lot longer than my elder dd though so possibly that contributed to her sweet tooth?) I was doing it all again though I know i would try to avoid giving her much chocolate until she was older than 2 like my elder dd. I think i have done her no favours by giving her such a sweet tooth.

Yabu. No need to give such a young baby chocolate. I'm quite shocked that do many people think this is ok. No wonder we have an obesity problem in the uk. Children are being weaned onto chocolate and 'puddings' some very strange thinking on this thread..

Well, lets look at nutrional content:

70 cals, 7.4g carbs, 4.2g fat, 1.3 protein..

Oh no, silly me, that's the average content of breastmilk per 100ml - which is 90% water, how about buttons:

75cals, 8.2g carbs, 4.3g fat, , 1.1g protein (per 14g serving)

Yep, that chocolate is evil stuff alright :P

Oh, and an apple: calories 65, carbs 17.3, fat 0.2, protein 0.3

so I think we can all see which is the sugary snack!

Besides, if you give them to her straight (rather than cut with porridge) how much exactly do you think will go down and how much will be smeared all over her face and hands instead.

bubbley - yes, yes absolutely. A couple of Chocolate Buttons on Christmas Day.... I hope the OP has bought her DD a lifetime subscription to Weight Watchers.

I think it is just possible you are overthinking this a leeeetle big.

But I did as well with my PFB, DS2 however has had pretty much everything since 6 months with the exception of honey.

It will be fine, don't worry, it won't make any difference in the long term.

Perfectstorm, I am Italian, but I lived in the UK for quite a long time, until 3 yrs ago.
Italian paediatricians are quite strict to the point of obsession when it comes to weaning, but I've always thought that the advise to avoid chocolate for the first 12/18 months of a baby's life is quite sensible.

Now, to a more important matter, tell me about the warnings re choc and dogs

Chunky, I don't think it is a question of calories. It's a question of immaturity of the liver to process it.

Or maybe it is just an Italian urban legend

My DD (2 and a half) shares the puddings we eat and I have no problem giving her chocolate if she fancies some (sometimes she eats it, and sometimes she does not... Like any other food).

However, at 6 months? I certainly would not have given her a chocolate button - perhaps a bit of home-made cake or whatever dessert we were having...

But then I hate chocolate buttons - they are sugar and they do not taste like chocolate to me...

No idea why chocolate has got such a bad reputation.... Good quality chocolate is a perfectly decent foodstuff in moderation. Here's a question for you (courtesy Michael Pollan's 'In Defence of Food')....

If you're stuck on a desert island with a continuous supply of one of the following which would you choose to keep you in good health until you were rescued?... a) bananas, b) alfalfa sprouts or c) chocolate?

Answer is chocolate... but the popular conception that chocolate is a 'bad food' means that most people would pick one of the other two believing them to be healthier and/or more nutritious .

Dogs can actually drop dead on the spot from eating too much chocolate apparently, it's the theobromine they can't cope with. Never ever heard of zero tolerance of chocolate for babies though.

Chil, no, chocolate does not have a bad reputation, its virtues are well known and much publicized.
Many areas of Italy have made their fortune producing and exporting good chocolate.

However, it is also believed (at least by Italian drs) that the liver of small babies can't process it efficiently. I don't think it is such a big deal to wait until a child is 12 months to give him/her their first taste of pure heaven

If you particularly want to do it then I don't suppose a tiny taste is going to set your child up for a lifetime of obesity.

However, I am with the tiny minority on this thread who say they don't see the point. Babies don't know what chocolate is. They are so new to food that anything is exciting and fun. Giving a small baby chocolate is something that is purely for the adults as we are the ones who associate with "treat", "special occasion" etc.

My DS has had treat-like things such as little pieces of cake, biscuit etc, whatever we are eating, probably since about 9 or 10 months which was when he became obsessed with whatever we were doing or having. He didn't have chocolate as such until he was about 15 months when he came to my office and my boss who is a complete soft touch gave him some of her chocolate bar. He is now completely obsessed with her and follows her around going "uh uh uh uh" until she gives him chocolate.

I don't see much harm in it, but nor do I see the point of setting it up as some big,ceremonial thing. The Midwinter Giving of the Chocolate is upon us. Bring out your firstborn sons and offer them up to the God of Gluttony!

There's nothing wrong with chocolate per se, and yes, I agree with Franca that the good properties of chocolate are well known - but that applies to good chocolate though, not those horrid buttons or mars bars.

But whether it's buttons or Valhrona chocolate - I am not sure choc is treat for babies is it? It's a treat for parents. The baby would probably prefer whatever their favourite food of the moment is. My DD only ate spinach for the first couple of months of weaning (it did not last, btw)

Hig - taste of artificial sweetness

Breast milk and fruit is natural sweetness and taste very different to choc sweetness

Franca research shows chocolate helps human liver function, though. (Seriously - google. It's true.) And I tried looking for any evidence at all that it's bad for infants and came up with zero. So maybe it's one of those things people have said for so long they still do? My GP insists you should give Calpol rather than let a kid have a temperature, when that has been the reverse of NICE guidelines for a while now. It takes a while for doctors to catch up sometimes.

Chocolate is lethally poisonous to dogs. So are grapes/raisins and onions.

"No wonder we have an obesity problem in the uk. Children are being weaned onto chocolate and 'puddings' some very strange thinking on this thread..."

Actually this thinking - that kids should be introduced sensibly to a wide range of foods rather than taught that some are special and forbidden fruit - is perfectly sensible. Nobody in my family has ever had a problem with weight - as in, nobody - and it's because we all see food in context. Neurosis is not a way to develop a healthy approach to eating. We rarely have puddings ourselves, but when we do we all have them. We don't have a special healthy diet for babies and a different one for adults, and IMO that thinking can lead to obesity just because you don't lay patterns for lifelong eating except by example. Normal diets from the start means habits for life.

We eat 3 meals a day that (most of the time!) are tasty and balanced, and a couple of times a week that will involve a yummy pudding after supper. We don't eat endless junk ourselves - don't even have it in the house in fact. So to say that offering the occasional bit of chocolate or apple crumble to my kids will lead to their adult obesity strikes me as ludicrous.

I think a bit of sanity about food is a really good example to set.

"Breast milk and fruit is natural sweetness and taste very different to choc sweetness"

Sorry, but that makes no sense. Refined sugar comes from either cane or beet. Those are vegetable substances and completely natural - have you ever sucked or chewed on a bit of sugar cane? What about maple syrup - that's boiled tree sap.

There's nothing whatsoever unnatural about sugar - unless you mean aspartame or saccharine which ewwww, I can't eat either, it's absolutely disgusting. But fructose (fruit sugar) is just sugar. It's all just sugar. It may feel different as an adult, because we see fruit as healthy and bm obviously is, but truth be told sugar is sugar is sugar. In fact a lot of the reason people love mashed potatoes is it's so high from a GI perspective that you get a sugar rush - it's a comfort food for a reason.

Perfect, as I said I know very well of the virtues of chocolate, I love chocolate (and so do my children).
But if you google "weaning and chocolate" on the Italian google, you'll find that the guidelines advise to avoid chocolate (together with salame, parma ham, fried food, etc etc) for the first 12 months of baby's life.

I have friends with a very OTT paed who didn't give choc to their PFB until she was 3

MsKlo I was wondering all sorts of things about 'ecstasy life' until you explained it

I choose the 'baby-led' approach with not-so-healthy food. If DS gets hold of chocolate or mini cheddars or something else that we/other kids are having, then he's welcome to it. But I don't buy them purposely to give him.

Except for the custard creams of course.

And the mince pies.