Is it safe to give baby rice porridge?

[katerose2022]

Hi all, our baby is almost 7 months old and have started solids. Next stage will introduce meat and fish etc and I read that you can mix it with rice porridge. But is it really safe to give rice porridge to babies? I remember reading somewhere that rice sold in the UK has quite high arsenic (higher than allowed in the EU).

If not using rice I guess I can still make porridge out of pearl barley but it'll be a bit tedious...

Does anyone have a view on this pls? Thanks!

It's fine, check the solid starts website or app for any food you're unsure of.

You can make porridge out of porridge- I.e oats. Seems simpler than messing around with barley.

but why would you? It the baby is 7 months you can give meat and fish as finger food. Or are you trying to get it to a consistency you can spoon feed?

Thanks both! Yeah I'm still spoon feeding him. He hasn't mastered finger food yet (or I haven't mastered the right texture of finger food yet...)

You're right, baby rice isn't advised now due to the arsenic and it's nutritionally useless. Just make porridge out of oats like normal porridge. I made porridge fingers when doing BLW so baby could pick them up. Tablespoon each of oats and whole milk, put in small shallow dish, let soak in 5 mins, microwave for 2 mins, cut into strips.

Have a look at this guide from the Caroline Walker Trust. It gives suggested portion sizes, sample menus and ideas for finger foods.

You'll probably need from page 33

Use oats

Thank you all! I'll try oats then :)

Wow this is super useful. Thanks a lot!

You don't need to do anything special with it. Just make normal porridge. I used to mix purreed prunes in sometimes as DC1 was constipated a lot but otherwise just oats heated up with milk same as I make for myself.

After 6 months baby can eat anything you can except whole nuts and honey either as spoon food or finger food.

Don't bother with baby porridge just give normal porridge oats made either milk or water.

I have to say porridge mixed with meat or fish sounds totally rank. I wouldn't do that at all.

Mine had baby rice but by 6 months just normal rice, also normal porridge. From 6 months they ate the same as us but cut up, shredded or mashed obviously

No problem @katerose2022

I think the only rice product that is a big problem is rice milk which shouldn't be given to under 5s

When we started weaning our paediatrician suggest making rice pudding instead of porridge as we were concerned about allergens and oats was on our possibly allergic too list

Normal rice is fine for babies in moderation although it’s not necessary to mix meat or fish with rice porridge or anything else. Rice porridge is a pretty common weaning food in a lot of Asian cultures