Alternatives to aptamil cereal

[MamaFrost]

Hi! My son is almost a year old, and has been having aptamil cereals/porridge for his breakfast since about 7months. Knowing how expensive these are for the quantity you get, I've tried feeding him weetabix and ready brek but he doesn't take to them well at all. I've even tried putting a bit of weetabix in the aptamil cereal to try and introduce it gradually, but he's having none of it! He'll happily have cheerios but I don't want to just offer that at breakfast times. Anyone know of any alternative recipes to the aptamil cereals that they've found helpful? Or is it just a matter of persistence? Thanks :)

You could try him with "non-cereal" options instead, maybe eggs, peanut butter on toast, fruit and Greek yoghurt, pancakes etc. A little boy I look after loves a jacket potato with cheese which takes minutes in the microwave!
If it doesn't look like his usual cereal he might be more open to trying something new. But other than that I think it's just a matter of persistence.

Porridge?

I mash up banana with plain porridge oats. The kids just cannot get enough of it!

Cheers both for the suggestions! I think you're right, NannyR - I reckon he'd be more likely to try things that don't look like his usual cereal, that way he's not expecting a certain flavour. And I never thought about putting mashed banana in porridge oats!! Will definitely give that a try - he likes banana so that could be a winner. Will let you know how things go :).

Just kerp offering what you want your child to eat, you are parent and they will eventually eat, but it might take several tries. Highly processed grains have no nutritional value. Porridge can best be cooked out of whole unprocessed grains, you can try different combinations with nuts, seads, spices to see what you like and what works.
Our favorites are rice/ coconut, buckwheat/ hazelnut.
We also eat oat with cinnamon or millet, quiona and combinations. Mainly flavoured with coconut oil and a bit of carob powder.
Combination of portidge and fruit is not great for young babies.

Zahrah what's wrong with oats and bananas mashed together? HV thought it was a good idea. It's plain oats, not baby porridge or anything with added sugars.

I realise it can be binding, luckily my kids have never been prone to constipation so it's not been an issue.

The issue is the way simple sugars in fruit are digested versus complex carbs in grain, it is not good to combine, fruit and grain is one of the worse food combo, hard to digest especially for young children.

I pressume you are talking about oat flakes not oat grain itself. It is better to use oat grain, then steel cut oats, then porridge oats, those are degrees of processing, at each step some benefits are lost. But each still much better than instant porridges , cheerios, weetabix and such.

Well, regarding HV I dont think they are particularly knowledgeable in healthy eating, i would not take food advices from them, they are commonly recommending processed foods like extrooded cereals, but that just my personal experience.

I have an excellent HV and most of the advice I've seen emphasises the importance of simple carbohydrates for babies (shouldn't be eating wholemeal / wholewheat until over 1 year for example). Their requirements are totally different to adults. At 7m milk is still the most important part of their diet anyway.

OP, hopefully you'll get the fussy stage over with now. There's nothing worse than trying to convince a stroppy toddler to eat veg!