To ask whats wrong with baby rice??

[havinhoops1974]

i've seen alot of hate for the old baby rice , I used a mixture of rice, mashed up food in a mini blender

I did get my wrist slapped by a HV for using rusks even though they are sold as ba by food aarrggh !

can someone fill me in whats so bad about them??

[wordfactory]

Ah but I found with DS that he found those first tastes overwhelming iyswim, so mixing with baby rice diluted them a bit.

DD didn't need this at all, but it was a godsend of DS.

[JjandtheBeanlovesUnicorns]

My two hated the stuff, dd gagged that much I assumed she wasn't ready to wean... Had her sat at the table one day at my mums while my baby brother was fed (he's 3mnths older than dd) and she stuck her hand in his butternut squash mush and that went straight in her mouth, I've never heard a 6mo old enjoy food so much, so that's where we started!

[horribledinners]

I didn't do baby led weaning. my 8 mo is only just learning to pincer grip. He'd be starving by now if i'd done blw.

Baby rice is a good quick thickener to have on standby for fruit purees, or anything you've over-thinned (thinnened?) accidentally. its not the devils breakfast.

[CaptainNancy]

Am I missing something here though?

If a baby (ie a baby fed on milk, not food) is hungry- don't you just give it more milk?

[worraliberty]

No, giving more milk didn't help...actually it just added to my son's colic.

I suppose it's similar to me. If I'm really hungry and I have say some soup, it hits the spot for a tiny while but if I were to eat bread with it...it'd hit the spot for far longer.

[tilder]

I agree worraliberty - people get very obsessed and judgmental about how other people feed their babies. My understanding is that the current advice is to wean around 6 months, although given how frequently the advice on when to start weaning changes its perhaps not surprising that there is already some conflicting evidence on this. I started weaning both mine around 5.5 months, when they were reaching for food, mouthing when I was eating and waking more at night.

Most advice for babies is based on an average child and not everyone can or will fit into the average. I know people who advocate BLW are very proactive about it and their views, but its not for everyone - my children would have starved if I had tried that so we did purees, which worked brilliantly. Sometimes did baby rice but generally different fruit/veg type things. Not all babies are developmentally capable of eating chunks by around 6 months, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't get solid food. Am currently expecting number 3 and am open minded about these things - will see what this one goes for.

[worraliberty]

Exactly tilder it's very much an each to their own thing imo. Same as BF or FF...I really can't get worked up about how other people feed their children.

[EggyAllenPoe]

"baby rice is bland and has f-all calories in i"

bland yes, in terms of calories = NO!!

it is 85% carbs, and mixed with milk has twice the calories of milk alone. Veg purees otoh are lower calorie on the whole

see here (note being Kellymom it makes babyrice look lower calorie by giving the value when mixed with water (contrary to the instructions on the packet to mix with babys usual milk))

i found that giving more milk = spending 1/4 of my time feeding. Giving baby rice = easier for that baby. Other babies were different.

so, in answer to the op, no there is nothing 'wrong' with baby rice.

[LeNomCaChange]

Gaaah! Here's a surprising thing - baby's are small people. Like larger people, they're all different and different stuff suits them!

My DD is nearly eight month and yomping away on purees and mash. When I give her little sticks of food and encourage her to eat them, she just looks at them funny and throws them on the floor. Yet she's a very hungry baby.

Baby rice was great when she first started weaning - it just tastes of milk, so great for first textures, then I used it to introduce stronger flavours by mixing it with different purees (then gradually using less rice, more puree until it was all puree).

Mums should just leave other mums alone and stop adding to the stress of being a parent by being all judgy. How did any of us survive the seventies, when all our mums smoked, drank and fed us on Heinz jars?

If all those mums in Somalia, struggling to feed their kids at all, could hear us all sneering at each other for going BLW, or not BLW, or feeding kids jar food or whatever, they'd think we were mad in the head and completely ungrateful for the blessed lives we have. So there.

I do draw the line at pureed Crispy Pancakes though

[CaptainNancy]

If you give them twice the calorific value at one feed, does that mean you feed them half as often? Or does it lead to overconsumption of calories?
Does this cause problems in later life (I am not certain, but I thought the pattern for the body's storage of fats was 'set' in the first 12 mo of life?)
Does the early addition of highly calorific food (of any form, I don't just mean baby rice) lead to a tendency for obesity in later life due to the increase storage of fats?

[horribledinners]

notjustclassic - yah, just he'd rather eat his rattle or the cat than edible stuff

[CaptainNancy]

Actually LaNom- this has been a very unsneery thread when compared with many on a similar topic.

Though you are wrong about all 70s mothers smoking, drinking and using heinz jars. Most mothers I knew in that era couldn't afford any of those 3!

[valiumredhead]

I used to mix it with pureed food to bulk it up a bit , but that was in the days where weaning babies at 16 weeks was the norm.

[EggyAllenPoe]

captainnancy

No.though there is an association between FF (not solids) and obesity - the causal relationship is unclear.

i like the way you first claim it is low calorie, then claim high calorie means it might be harmful...

[stillstanding]

OP, I think it's not so much what is wrong with baby rice but more that there is nothing particularly right about it, ie that it doesn't add value/nutritious content.

Not quite sure I understand how baby rice make the texture more manageable, Cogito? If fruits/veg etc are being mashed up/puree-ed etc then that is just as "manageable" ... have I missed the point?

[Dirtydishesmakemesad]

There is nothign wrong with it, it is just another type of baby weaning food in my opinion. My 4 have been weaned starting about 5 months and some have liked baby rice some have hated it. I would just feed your baby what and when you feel (well as long as you dont leave hospital with a new born and break out the pack of baby rice!) and not takl about it with anyone else because they will probably do it toally differently and make you doubt yourself

[tyler80]

Well apart from the fact that it's like eating wallpaper paste, quite a few studies have shown in contains quite a bit of arsenic.

[tilder]

I guess I found that some purees, especially apple and pear, went very runny when pureed, almost a liquid. So these I thickened up a bit with baby rice just to keep the stuff on the spoon.

[coraltoes]

The way some people react to baby rice you'd think it was ground up turds. I eat rice, you eat rice, why can't a baby as part of a varied diet? Mixing some rice with chicken, and veg is hardly going to make that baby balloon into an obese lout is it.

I used it to introduce certain stronger tasting vegetables such as green beans, but ditched it once other carbs and foods were established. BLW and finger foods not working here yet, all toys get eaten, all food gets thrown.

For what it's worth, a lot of baby cereals, including the Plum range contain significant amounts of rice.

Now what else is there for us to get all judgey about....

[Ghoulwithadragontattoo]

It's ground rice. That is a normal food. I found it very useful when weaning my two. Was good mixed with fruit for breakfast and also for thickening things like bolognese sauce. Also is very quick to make and bland flavour very good for children who don't like strong flavours. And easy to take on holiday etc. After a year most children eat a relatively full and normal diet but between 6 and 12 months it is reasonable that some foods are specially tailored for them.

[worraliberty]

"If you give them twice the calorific value at one feed, does that mean you feed them half as often? Or does it lead to overconsumption of calories?
Does this cause problems in later life (I am not certain, but I thought the pattern for the body's storage of fats was 'set' in the first 12 mo of life?)
Does the early addition of highly calorific food (of any form, I don't just mean baby rice) lead to a tendency for obesity in later life due to the increase storage of fats?"

I strongly doubt that because early weaning (if the mother felt it necessary) was very common when I was growing up.

I'm 42yrs old now and I genuinely only remember one obese child in Primary school and about 3 in my much bigger senior school.

Adult obesity was not even a fraction of what it is now either. I have never been overweight and nor have my parents or my 4 siblings...and my parents and elder siblings were brought up with full fat everything and beef dripping on their bread.

[CaptainNancy]

?edgar I did not claim it low calorie! that was scaredbear.

I said it was low in nutrients, meaning vitamins and minerals, which I was told by my HV. We were encouraged to use other things as thickeners (porridge and flaked quinoa- which I posted above) because they had better nutritional value.

I took the 'twice the calorific value' from your post of Tue 11-Oct-11 11:43:42.

[EggyAllenPoe]

whoops! Sorry,

but worras point stands.

[AhsataN]

i weaned my son at 5 months as he was never satisfied foe example drinking an entire bottle of hungry baby formula every hour and still being hungry. i used baby rice to start and then added pureed apple or pear then moved onto baby porridge.
i don't think there is anything wrong with it.
its your baby you do what you want.