Pudding for babies?

[BraveLilBear]

Random observation but I'm hoping someone can enlighten me.

My DS is 23weeks and so we're giving weaning lots of thought at the moment. Just about every sample menu I've seen for when they reach 7 months+ has some sort of main course followed by a pudding eg rice pudding, yoghurt or fruit.

Why?

I don't know many adults who always have a sweet after lunch and dinner, so why does it appear to be so important for babies?

Is it an extra way of getting calcium/fruit into them or is it just 'treat' food?

Genuinely curious...

I'm not sure but think its a way if getting extra food in them plus good to get them used to different flavours so different meal/then pudding will give them a good variety of tastes

For us it's more calcium and fruit. It's hard to get enough milk in them (for my DD anyway!) so yoghurt/rice pud help with that. And it's REALLY hard to keep her from being constipated, hence fruit.

I've always wondered why the books are obsessed with puddings as well. My son is 9m and it's enough effort to get three meals prepared let alone pudding as well! I just add fruit into each meal anyway so he'll eat grapes, peach or melon slices to occupy (pacify!) him while I'm cooking his dinner, or he'll have some banana spread on rice cakes for a snack.

See I thought that, too, greta, that you could have those as snacks instead.

I do understand the calcium/constipation line though.

Still seems weird to be building in an inbuilt need/habit for dessert. Is it easy to wean them off that when they're older?

From six months to 8 months, sometimes a meal was just a bit of fruit. After that, we slowly moved on to 3 meals a day by about 9 months. Now at nearly 11 months, I do give a pud type thing after lunch and dinner (sometimes just fruit) as they are starvos but get a bit bored of their main meal after a while so it perks them up for eating a bit more. Also coincided with stopping night feeds and dropping to only 3 mill feeds a day.