Salt in home cooked food

[PoptyPinnnngggg]

Hi all,

For a baby under the age of 12 months, would you feed the baby family meals that have been cooked with salt (e.g. salt added to cooking water, or added as seasoning during cooking), or would you omit the salt from the family meal altogether?

Lots of people say 'just give baby what you have e.g. spag bol, lasagne, shepherd's pie...' etc.

In reality are people cooking these family meals without salt in them? Or is baby getting the salted version?

I'll hold my hands up and say I cannot bear food to be cooked without salt and only season at the table - so I always cook my baby's food separately and it's such a faff (but I'd rather faff than omit the salt ).

So just interested in what everyone does in reality. Do most people these days have salt free family meals to share with baby?

I always add salt after cooking, as half the family don't like salty food. It really doesn't taste so different.

Yes, I just cooked without salt. Still do for some things (like cooking pasta) even though DS is 18 months. I don't worry about things like salt in cheese but I generally just don't add salt. It's true that your tastebuds change too; I now find 'normal' food very very salty.

If you cook from scratch, the amount of salt in the baby's portion is negligible probably. I remember reading somewhere a doctor suggested that that a baby's daily salt allowance is 1/8 teaspoon, and if you cook with your own fresh ingredients without jar sauces/ curry pastes, it's hard to actually put that much salt in the food.

My children only ate what I cooked and it all always had salt in it. If you're cooking properly, adding salt doesn't make your dishes "salty." If it does, you're using too much.

I just cooked without salt..,10 years I still do.

I didn’t put that much salt in cooking, added it after to our meals if needed.

I'm lucky as I'm used to not adding salt. Sometimes I'd do a stir fry type thing and add my own soy sauce.

I always found this problematic as I use salt in everything I cook. Pasta cooked in unsalted water is revolting for adults, even if you add the salt later.

Cook without salt - you really don't notice after not very long!

Another vote for cooking without salt. Babies kidneys really can’t handle much and if you’re also giving them any bread and / or cheese they would be having way too much salt each day

Cook without salt - portion off baby's food. Add salt to the rest.

@Chicchicchicchiclana

I always found this problematic as I use salt in everything I cook. Pasta cooked in unsalted water is revolting for adults, even if you add the salt later.

I wouldn't salt pasta water and I'm a complete salt fiend. Pasta is the one thing I wouldn't expect to be salty.

A tiny bit of salt is really not a big deal

Don’t cook pasta with salt never have.. I use less salt in cooking for children - when babies no salt. If we need more salt we add our own.

We didn’t add any salt in cooking and added salt to ours after cooking if needed. It’s done us good to reduce our intake anyway.
We used very low salt stick too.
Salt is very dangerous for little babies. We are a bit less careful now at 18 months but still avoid it.

@Chicchicchicchiclana

I always found this problematic as I use salt in everything I cook. Pasta cooked in unsalted water is revolting for adults, even if you add the salt later.

I have literally never added salt to pasta water.

@Aquamarine1029 @Midnight0 I did wonder if the actual salt baby would get is very low anyway and so it wouldn't really matter- it's hard to judge when I cook by eye not by recipe.

@orangejuicer yes I do portion off and cook baby's food separately but it is a bit of a faff which is why I was wondering if everyone else did this or just cooked without salt.

I cook without adding salt, and grownups add it at the table if we want it. I do use stock cubes/Worcester sauce etc in food though so it’s not completely salt free.

I cook without salt so I don’t need to worry as much about the salt content in foods such as bread and cheese. It can add up pretty quickly once they start eating toast for example.

I'm with the Italians that insist that pasta is cooked in water as salty as the sea!

When mine were little I did what you do, separate salt free food for the baby and salty pasta water for us!

A sprinkle of salt in a whole family meal is fine, the baby's portion is tiny so the amount of salt they'd consume is immeasurably small.

I think that the salt in my food mainly comes from stocks/Worcester sauce/fish sauce/soy sauce ... and food would taste terrible with these omitted. So I don't understand how you can cook a salt free spag bol or shepherd's pie. Unless people are adding salt in the form of stock etc. and just not counting it because it's not salt from a shaker? Or can you make decent low salt versions of these for that a baby can eat?

I used low salt stock cubes and/or reduced salt tamari when cooking. I didn't really care too much about the odd meal that wasn't as tasty as it could have been from an adult perspective as it's only for a relatively short period of time.

They're not as good but you can get "very low salt" stock cubes in Morrison's. They're pretty bland but I'm a first time mum stress pot so I've been trying to learn to love them!