"Just feed him what you eat"

[SpadesOfGlory]

Is it just me who's confused about how to actually do this?

7 month old DS (weaned from 5months due to reflux) has progressed brilliantly from purees to what I would call proper meals. He's confidently chewing and there isn't really anything he wont eat. The HV said to get him eating "family meals" as soon as possible, just give him what we're eating without adding salt.

This is where I get confused. If I make a homemade mild curry, the curry paste has loads of salt in! And if I do mince, carrots and onions there's a stock cube or gravy granules in it, same with cottage pie etc. Can DS eat these? Does it mean just not to add separate salt to your cooking? So far I've just been giving him pasta and tomato based sauces, bolognaise etc, fish and mash, scrambled egg and toast, but would love to know if I can give him our "normal" meals or if I have to alter it in any way?

My DS has always had what we have. We don’t eat together during the week as he eats so much earlier, but he’ll have our leftovers from the night before. Means we can just warm it up quickly. We have curries made with coconut milk, onions, garlic and spices, pasta dishes, ratatouille, roast vegetables, omelette/frittata, spag Bol, tagine, baked salmon with boiled veg, Sunday roast etc. The more you cook from scratch the less you have to worry about salt as you just don’t add it, but don’t worry too much about a little bit of stock or cheese from time to time.

Boots do baby stock cubes. I'd prepare the meal e.g. cottage pie. Then once the mince was browned separate some for the baby and put their stock in with theirs and then do ours. I'd freeze any extra for a quick meal another day.

Also sometimes I'd make something like a stir fry, give DD it plain and add some soy sauce to mine.

It's way easier giving them the same meals, there isn't much they can't eat and it saves so much time.

You're thinking too much about it - just don't add extra salt to meals. I didn't and wouldn't worry about salt already in stock or curry paste etc

I have always made DS meals separately. He wants his tea at 4ish anyway so we can't eat together and I think it's going to stay that way for a while (he's just 2.) I'll make up a big batch of curry or bolognese for him and freeze it in portions. There's just no way he could eat everything that we eat, he gets food all over his face (of course) so I don't put chilli in his food and cooking is our 'thing' so I won't change our recipes at the moment. I'm really looking forward to the time that he's old enough to stay up a bit later and eat with us but he's just not interested in what we eat at the moment. Won't eat veg on its own or roast meat, he just likes sauces and stuff. I really wouldn't worry about it, I don't think it's always the most helpful advice!

I had this discussion with the HV once. She said," If you add two oxo cubes to your 1lb mince, for you your husband and the baby, how much of the stock cube is the baby going to eat in his tiny portion?" She advised not using salt when cooking veg or rice or pasta, not using processed foods and if we preferred to cook separately for the baby, cooking veg and pasta together all in one milk pan for him, without salt.

Lol at sharing meals with your child being lazy bollocks.

My dc ate what we ate from 6 months and not because I'm lazy but because they were part of the family and capable of joining us for food.

I would have thought the concern was not just how much salt the baby is ingesting but that giving a baby food with added salt, in whatever form, means they'll develop a taste for salt in their food that is hard to deal with as they get older.

Look at the popularity of halloumi cheese - would people eat it at all if it wasn’t so intensely salty?

I've always just given DS what we have. He doesn't have big portions so there isn't the salt quantity. We have moved our meal time forward from around 7.30pm pre children to 5-5.30pm so that we eat together, and don't eat as many very spicy foods as we used to.

I agree that you seem to be over thinking it, my DS just ate what we ate, as a PP said the actual amount of ‘pure salt’ in a child’s portion is going to be very small. If you mainly have ‘cooked from scratch’ food the odd spoon of curry paste or oxo cube is very unlikely to do any harm. .

I can’t eat food without salt, it tastes of nothing. So I would remove a bit of whatever it was before the salt was added. E.g for cottage pie, remove some mince from the pan before adding salt and stock, put it in a separate little dish. Mash the potatoes with milk and butter, remove a few spoons to put on baby’s dish, then salt and pepper ours. If making a curry, I’d separate some off before adding the spices and do a very mildly spiced version in a separate pan. Sometimes baby ate something different for convenience. Just get in the habit of making extra portions when you can.

My dc ate what we ate from 6 months and not because I'm lazy but because they were part of the family and capable of joining us for food.

I totally agree that it isn't lazy at all... but it's important to say that you must just do what is best for your family. It just isn't feasible for DS to eat with us at the moment...he's perfectly happy, eats well and is still part of the family!

I just did this within reason tbh - I don’t add a huge amount of salt to my cooking anyway but on days where what we were eating wasn’t quite suitable for DS I gave him baby food out of a jar or pouch or made him some scrambled egg or pasta. I don’t think it has to be all or nothing.

Ive been giving my son what we eat since he was 7 months old and he's 3.5 now. All I do is blend and freeze in portions for him (he is disabled and can't eat solids properly) I tend to cook everything from scratch anyway but its also nice to have a stock of food for when we fancy something he can't have.
You really are over thinking this, just use low salt or no salt and you'll be fine.

The trick is to make from scratch, I avoided curries at that age and used low sodium stock cubes. Shepherds pie was their favourite but they ate lasagna, roast dinner, pasta, stir fries etc. I still barely use salt

I was much more concerned with refined sugar at that age. I cooked from scratch so I knew what was going in it and didn’t use sauces. I wasn’t too fussed about stock cubes etc because the size of his portion wasn’t huge. I wouldn’t add salt at the table and have got out of the habit of adding ‘straight’ salt to my cooking anyway, as DP dumps a whole load onto his plate!

I preferred DS to be eating what we were eating because I wanted him to have access to a wide variety of food. He was a great eater up until 2.5 and now he’s taken it upon himself to only want chips so every meal time is painful

By the time I had my second DC, she just used to have what we had to save time. If I wanted to add extra spices/stock to an adult version, I just used to do the kids version in a small pan alongside. It's the same prep etc, so not really any extra time. I still do this with curries now they're older as they don't like it as spicy as DH and me. However, if you've been advised to do it to make your DC a "better" eater, my experience was that DC2 is far far fussier than DC1 who I mostly batch-cooked separate food for as a baby!

@ShowOfHands I didn't mean sharing meals is lazy - clearly it is easier once they're able to eat adult food. The advice from HVs is lazy. Newly weaned babies simply can't eat all adult dinners, there are so many things that they shouldn't have because they're unhealthy or just contain too much salt/sugar for babies (yet are fine for adults in moderation). Not too mention the danger of choking hazards like nuts and rounded veg.

Lots of good advice here. I never add extra salt to food like when boiling pasta or rice, don't have salt on the table so I guess we're fairly low salt anyway.

Who ever said baby portion sizes are small so how much actual salt are they eating talks a lot of sense. I think, on balance, what I'll probably do is buy the extra low salt stock cubes (forgot I had a packet of chicken ones in the cupboard already!) And use those in my cooking if i need to, and not add packet powder mixes or gravy granules to anything.

Pretty sure my parents didnt make any adjustments when weaning me, so maybe I am overthinking a lot. (PFB after all )

I think from 12m I stopped cooking separately for DD and we eat the same. I cook with wine, stock, spices, salt etc. but I just go easy on those things as it's good for me to reduce my salt intake too.

With gravy I do add a bit more cooking water from the veg to DD's to dilute the salt a bit.

@GrumpyHoonMain

I'm interested to hear you say you avoid chillies and garam masala. Are these things bad for young children or is it just that they tend not to like them?

I make a curries that do include these things and DD likes them (although I don't make them really hot anyway as I prefer a milder curry).

There's so much they can't or shouldn't have

Well not really. They can’t have whole nuts, or honey before the age of 1. They shouldn’t have too much salt or sugar, but that’s good advice for all of us.

@MrMumble

He will probably never develop a varied diet if you're never eating with him and give him the same stuff every day. My MIL firmly believes that children need to see their food cooked and then eat it "from the pot" to develop healthy eating habits.

ChilledBee

Where on earth did you get that impression. I cook his food with him every day, some days it's stuff that's been batch cooked...as it is with adults too, some days it's from fresh. It just isn't necessarily the same things as us at the same time. He has very healthy eating habits, cooking is the most important thing to me and to my DH too but circumstance demands that we don't eat together. I didn't ask for that advice and am really offended that you've decided to extrapolate that my DS won't develop good eating habits from the fact that I've said that it's ok not to just make one thing a day and all eat it. It's ok to eat food that is unsuitable for your child and also make them a separate, still cooked from scratch, still healthy meal. We're talking about babies and toddlers here, not children.

MrMumble dont worry, I feed DS separately in the evening too. DH isnt home from work til 7pm which is baby's bedtime. I take something I've frozen and reheat it for him. I don't see how families with working parents can all eat together at 5? Assuming a 9-5 job of course.

ChilledBee can I just say as well, I cooked with DS right from the get go. As a 16 month old, one of his favourite meals was scrambled egg with kale, his favourite food of all time was blueberries and he would eat curries, stews, soups, anything and everything that was put on his plate.

Fast forward to now, at nearly three and a half, he’s quite picky, demands chips nearly every day (obviously he doesn’t get them) and needs encouraging and cajoling —and threatening— to eat anything remotely new or healthy.

It’s down to the child, outside influences, phases, all sorts, as to whether they have good eating habits. It’s not fair to say something quite as judgemental as that!