SALT - am I the only one??! (Long!)

[Fastasleep]

I'm slightly biased against the inclusion of salt in babies and children's diets because my son has kidney problems and we've been told to keep him on a low sodium diet for as long as we possibly can... But I've read up on the topic, I've bought the baby recipe books, I've talked to doctors and they all say that babies under one year should have no salt added to their food and that their parents should try not to feed them ready made meals due to the salt content - this includes crisps and even white bread...

But no one I meet seems to care about this, (they all seem to have healthy enough kids) and they feed them crips etc... That's ok by me as long as they know what they're doing, because it's their choice.. But when companies like Blooming Marvellous send my husband a baby food recipe by email that tells you to season it with salt! It makes me angry! It's like every child in this country is fighting a losing battle against obesity and heart problems

Can you tell I'm obsessive? Lol... are there any others out there or are you all layed back when it comes to these things??

I'm proud to say that Theo's first taste of actual sugar will be on his first birthday when he has a piece of cake! I'm going to shut up before you think I'm a psycho!

Right, yeah I spose there is lots of salt in Ready Meals. Dunno, don't have them. DP won't let me buy them because he thinks they make them from the food scrapings off the floor.

EnlightendFlum I use eating apples to stew for DD because they are naturally sweet. They don't fall (is that the right word sure its what my Mum used to say) the same but that can be rectified with a potato masher. I also grate eating apples for her.

Casmie you make some good points about the alternatives I think. Up until now I have been careful about not adding stock to our food when I'm planning on DD having some. Eg I would have made the vegi lasagne (sounds delish btw) without stock. Made a nice shepherd's pie without stock or salt the other day and DD lapped it up.

I'm sure ready brek is OK for babies. In any case I have never given it until after 6 months. I used an organic baby muesli with DS who was weanted at 17 weeks and Boots organic baby porridge with DD who was weaned at 22 weeks. At the times these were the only baby cereals I could find without added sugar. I sweeten with pureed prunes (but thats for another rather obvious reason ). Casmie what cereal do you use for DS2?

Ready Brek and Weetabix are the big faves in this house. Not ideal, but he spits out the baby ones in disgust!! Weetabix is a bit "naughtier" at 0.25g salt (0.1g sodium) per 2 biscuits (but then he only has one so not too bad).

Bozza: for stock, Kallo do a low salt veggie cube (NOT the normal Kallo brand - have previously been mistaken and thought all Kallo was low salt and they're not) at 0.03g sodium per 100ml and if I'm using beef or chicken then I sometimes use watered down fresh stocks from the supermarket (0.3g sodium per 100ml but I dilute to at least 50:50 with water).

Only rarely though and only to make palatable to us if we're all sharing a meal. If it's baby food only then I'll just use water or Kallo low salt.

DS has weetabix which I think is fair enough at his age and I like the fact that it absorbs a lot of milk because he doesn't drink it. DD has ready brek as I said - had weetabix once when we ran out of ready brek. I'm happy with this because I am very careful with her other food.