Commercial bread for 9 month old

[cornflakegirl]

My son eats a slice of supermarket-bakery white toast every day, and I'm worried about the salt levels.

He eats pretty much no processed food, although does have cheese some days, and I never add salt to his meals.

But I just read that a slice of bread has 0.5g of salt and I was shocked! I know that when I make it (v rare now that I'm back at work) it has nowhere near that much.

I'm not sure how much salt there is in breastmilk and what levels there are naturally in the other food he eats, so I don't know whether I should worry?

He loves his toast - he can get very frustrated sometimes at being fed, but still finds most finger food very hard work - toast is the one he's really good at - so I don't really want to stop him eating it.

Do I need to go and buy a breadmaker and start making all our own bread?

I was wondering about that too, I have just started giving my ds some fingers of toast for breakfast which he just sucks on at the moment. As he liked them so much I made him a special little loaf in our breadmaker, only to find he won't touch it!!! I was also wondering about salt levels in cheese so any answers welcome.

I think you can get a bit too hung up on issues like this. As long as you are not adding salt to the foods you give your lo you will be doing ok. I for one am not about to start making my own bread - there are better things to do in life!!

Seona - I appreciate your point of view - but salt is salt.

I'm guessing that the health professionals aren't just pulling numbers out the air when they say that babies shouldn't have more than 1g a day.

And if by giving my son a slice of bread a day I'm giving him more than 1g of salt every day, and potentially putting a strain on his kidneys, I don't think it's a complete overreaction to want to stop doing that!

(Sorry if that sounds like a strop - it's really not - but I am after objective information on how much salt I am likely to be giving my son, so I can make a considered decision...)

sainsburys \link{http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/food/healthylifestyle/latestonhealth/Healthatsainsburys/Sainsburys_bread.htm\own brand bread} has reduced salt (.03g/slice for medium cut).

Most fresh foods, (fruit, veg, meat etc) tend to be fairly low salt.

I vaguely remember that breastmilk is very low in sodium, whereas cows milk (and hence other dairy products) is relatively high. i'll see if i can find any info to back this up!

my dd is 6 months on sunday - so i need to learn about all this!

footstep

x

Think that should be 0.3g per slice footstep! :)

Happy half birthday to your dd!

If you can find any info on sodium in breastmilk, I'd be grateful - my searches seem to be proving fairly futile so far :(

Ahem...I did buy a breadmaker, tbh. If you can afford it, think this is a great reason to justify it. Surely you would like nice fresh bread of a morning also?

We have a Panasonic WDsomething. It was about £100 and is fantastic, never a duff loaf. If you can afford it, go for this one, loads of people reccomend it.

Was shocked recently by the gary linekar ad saying, basically, a slice of bread has the same amount of salt as a packet of crisps.

Not trying to make you feel bad or anything, just I was where you are now 2 years ago and that was my solution.

Also I get to feel all yummy-mummy-esq as i stand there in my puked upon, tatty towelling robe and spoon in the pre-assembled bread-mix. Its fab!

"He eats pretty much no processed food"

So why on earth give him white bread??

a-hem, yes 0.3g/slice

found a nice comprehensive source of data - US department of agriculture research service has a search facility that give nutritional breakdown for human milk (and lots of other things!) \link{http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/\here}

apparently 5mg of sodium per 100g - i'll work out tomorrow what that is in grams of salt per day for a b/f baby (unless somebody fancies doing it?)

footstep

soup dragon - partly because of not filling him up with too much fibre - but mainly because it's what i eat! i never claimed to be perfect!

footstep - assuming 1 pint of milk a day, and that milk is 1g/ml, i make that 30mg of sodium a day, or about 75mg of salt. so i guess nothing to worry about there!

love your website link - thank you! according to that, 621mg of sodium in 100g of cheddar - so about 1.5g of salt. And nearly 3 times as much in parmesan - so my cunning plan of using half as much parmesan is a complete dud!

filyjonk - i'd love to have a breadmaker! this may be just the excuse i need!

the walkers advert was what scared me too...

will have to look at the panasonic - thanks for your endorsement too psychobabble :)

They make croissants and french crusty bread, too, cfg.

And malt loaves and sundried tomato bread and all sorts...

Hmmmm. Hope this is helping.

Spoke to my mum last night - she has a Panasonic - she said that she uses a tsp (6g) of salt in a 400g loaf - which would be about the same salt level as the bread we currently eat. Does everyone use this much?

And I thought bread was good for you!

Seona - I appreciate your point of view - but salt is salt.

Yes and it's also naturally in some foods that we eat - just like sugar..........

Psychobabble - thanks - that's good to know :)

QoQ - yes, and it's an essential part of our diet. I'm not trying to eliminate all salt from my son's food! But if I can reduce the salt in his toast, then I can worry less about giving him cheese and tinned tomatoes, because more of his daily salt allowance will be going spare.