Weaning: confused about salt content

[charcb]

Mums, I’m very confused as to what’s okay do give baby in terms of foods and the total salt they can have. What a minefield.

1. I see lots of mums giving babies things like cream cheese or cheddar cheese or other shop bought products but when I check they are all high in salt. Is this okay to give then?

1. I’m trying to go for baby led weaning but when I check what we cook most stuff has salt unless cooking right from scratch. And I simply don’t have time to make my own curry sauce for example! For example I made meatball with orzo for us the other day but I have no idea how much salt there is in the meatballs (bought in the butchers) or I am making fish curry but the curry sauce has salt… what do you guys do? Cook from scratch?

1. I got told the limit for babies daily is 1 gram a day. But how do you even know how much this is unless you’re calculating at every meal how much of each ingredient you use? (Baby is quite demanding and just preparing food for him whilst keeping him busy / entertained is a struggle let alone counting salt content 😓)

Thanks everyone. I’m finding weaning rather stressful I must admit!

Salt is the main thing to be cautious of. We did baby led weaning and I must admit that we did make most things from scratch. As you say, shop bought sauces do contain a fair bit of salt so we avoided these. I'd recommend books like 'the baby led weaning Cookbook' or 'what mummy makes' and there are a few apps available too.

It's OK to give your baby things like the cheese you mentioned as long as they're not having too much. If there's a day when you're giving your baby something like a pasta in cheese sauce, I'd just be mindful of giving another salty meal the day after. We also used unsalted butter in my dd's first 12 months.

Once they reach 12 months, they can have a little more salt. We still make things from scratch but I wouldn't stress too much if we used a normal stock cube instead of a low salt one for example, and you can relax a little if you're eating out with your little one.

It might seem overwhelming to begin with, but there are some very basic recipes that are easy enough. You could batch cook some curry sauce and some pasta sauce and freeze portions.

Oh and I wouldn't literally sit counting the grams of salt in each meal! It doesn't need to be that difficult. Once you're in the swing of it, it does get easier. You will also see lots of mums doing different things but don't let that make you doubt what you're doing. Xx

I never worried about things like cheese when thinking about salt, but I did do my own sauces. Its an easy way to cut down salt intake.

A basic red sauce is so so easy to make a store in the freezer and will go with the meatballs, a bolognese, chilli, lasagne etc.

Personally I just don't add extra salt to anything and try not to worry too much. I do make my own sauces because the stuff in the shops sometimes has crazy amounts of sugar and preservatives. I think once you've done it a few times it doesn't take that long but I do know what you mean. For nights when I don't have time I use freezer stash/ baby ready meals or make pasta with a simple tomato or cheese sauce (takes less than 10 mins Inc cooking the pasta).

Given how much emphasis the NHS puts on salt you'd think the evidence would be stronger tbh. The recommended intake is based on "assumed intake" which is an average of measurements of breastmilk. Breastmilk can vary massively - I read somewhere by up to 16 times. Kidney damage is cited as a reason, but there don't seem to be any examples of it actually happening (and you know there's a mum somewhere doing burgers every day). Where there has been kidney damage it's due to dehydration or deliberate abuse not salt intake from normal food.

I'm not saying go mad - obviously you can have too much and I am careful what I give my baby. I just don't worry about it too much. I'm far more worried about the bits of chocolate my mum keeps giving DS! The evidence on sugar is much more robust!

I calculated a few examples to get an idea of quantity. For example, the sliced bread we were buying at the time only reached 1g after 5.5 slices, so I didn’t count the individual crusts the baby might manage, it was clear we wouldn’t reach the limit.
If you give small amounts and assume that some will end up on the floor you can give many foods without worrying.
If the main meals are salt free (because you take the food you are making for yourself out of the pan before adding salt) you can be more relaxed about salt in snacks.

I wouldn’t add salt to anything and where possible I’d try to make my own sauces. But I don’t worry too much about it. If we were eat lunch out or use a jar out of convenience, I just make sure the other meals that day are salt free.

Yes you go for max 1 gram per day, and roughly calculate ingredients that you're putting into cooking - but TBH unless it was more than 0.1g, I probably wouldn't bother counting. So I wouldn't look up the salt content of an onion or something like that, but if giving baby fish fingers I'd look at the salt contained in one, or crackers etc. And generally use things like lower salt stock cubes (I found Knorr are better than most without being tasteless). Add salt to adult food/meals on the plate, or after taking the baby's portion out.

When calculating I'd just guess, and think OK. so this usually makes 4 portions but baby will probably eat about 1/4 of an adult portion, so 1/16 of the total salt content I'm putting in.

If you do not have salt number available you can use Sodium and multiply by 2.5.

If you do go over the 1g it's not the end of the world as it's not like a toxicity limit or something - just try to stick to lower salt foods for the next day or two. If they are consistently having over 1g per day that would be a problem but an occasional day is fine.

I found 1g per day not too difficult to stick to at all as long as you are not feeding a lot of convenience foods. Some meals sold for young babies/toddlers are surprisingly high in salt so being in the habit of checking labels pays off.

Then once you pass 12m it's 2g per day and that's easy peasy!

A baby did die from salt poisoning although the case I remember was a long time ago. The newspapers at the time ran with the headline of ready brek being the problem when it was actually probably the mashed potaoes and gravy.

www.independent.co.uk/news/salt-in-food-led-to-baby-death-1108931.html

But if you read the article you'll see it was a 3 month old baby eating around 9g of salt per day - well over the established limits and earlier than weaning is recommended these days.

You need to be careful. But tbh with baby led weaning my children didn't eat fish curry or proper meals until about 1yo... I kept it quite simple.

For meals at start I did boiled/steamed/roasted vegetables. I would cut and cook a few carrots, courgettes.... and then freeze and just warm up a little bit for them. Or make a little bit of pasta in a tiny pot while cooking our meal. Or cut a bit of chicken and cook separately

Since having children we don't put salt at all in vegetables or eggs it's good to reduce salt in your cooking, you can always add in your own plate

Thanks mums - to keep it simple based on your answers I think I'll mostly do veg and fruit and foods that I know have low salt (like rice crackers from Sainsbury which are from their healthy range), meats and home made simple sauces (I only really know how to make tomato sauce but that's easy enough and can go in many things like pasta or chicken), plus some ready made food pouches. I also found some ready made sauces by the brand piccolo so I use those too. And obviously not add salt to meals. Then I'll just wait until the 1 year limit raises to 2 g so that it's all more manageable!