is baby rice a bad food to start babies on?

[robinredbreast]

dd is coming up for weaning age and when people mention baby rice they seem to do so disaprovingly am i missing something here?

depends if you are doing baby lead weaning (blw) or not.

it is not bad, but it is not that great either, it is like wallpaper paste, tasteless and bland

you can start with a pureed fruit or vegetable

or have a look at BLW for advice on how to wean without puree

It's just something that you don't really need. I didn't do BLW and I also didn't use baby rice.

I didn't use it either. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, it's just revolting!

better made up with expressed breast milk though

Message withdrawn

I didn't do BLW but didn't use baby rice either, if you are weaning at 6mo you can go straight onto veg/fruit purees or BLW if you prefer.

I don't think it's so much a 'bad' food, just a bit unnecessary.

I used it with fruit purees, thought it was fine

but I also think BLW is something we have been doing for eons, packaged up into a new thing

you can do both

Nowt wrong with baby rice imo. I liked it and so did dd. Its a bit like semolina I thought. dd liked eating it with cooked apple or carrots. Its not a necessary thing to have.

Hi just a quick reminder that on my side of the planet (by far the most populated) rice IS the main stapple throughout life and everybody is weaned on rice porridge.
Rice is by no means evil, on the contray it IS very nutritious. And it's not bland at all if you add grated ginger, soy sauce and other goodies

So please let's put things into perspective.
Suddenly modern western women rediscover BLW and all other mothers are frowned upon?

But I'm with you 100% on the comercial aspect of formula milk producers trying to push us into buying wallpaper paste "baby rice".

To OP. Make you own steamed food if you can but don't beat yourself up if you are a working mum and have to resort to ready made babby food. It is very safe nowadays.

I gave my DD rice and millet porridge at 6mo. Mixed it with veg, a little home made stock and olive oil. I also did a pudding version with ebm and fruit.

I found it a really handy thing to have, it has the consistency of Ready Brek and you can whip it up in seconds. Agree with Slim, nothing wrong with rice, just remember to add flavour and avoid buying the specialist mass market baby food ones. I bought an organic German brand (Holle iirc) and it seemed to taste a bit nicer than Nestlé et al.

"Suddenly modern western women rediscover BLW and all other mothers are frowned upon?" - that's not really fair, slim - as you said, baby rice is a con, like baby pasta - rice itself is great and very lovely, and it's not just BLWers who hate babyrice. I honestly don't know any people doing BLW who "look down" on other parents - mostly we're all just too flaming lazy to puree...

Isn't rice porridge made with ordinary rice, just cooked differently?

Baby rice both gave my los bad wind & first bad night's sleep in weeks.

With ds1 I persisted with baby rice for a week, on and off, but with dd the next day I started her on butternut squash and she was a happy bunny.

Baby rice does get a bad press! I'm with Tarantula and others on here - I never did it just on its own but it's a really handy thing to have in the cupboard as a dessert - just make it up quite thick, like a rice pudding, add some cinnamon, sultanas and cooked apple/pear, and you're away! I actually find it quite tasty - maybe I'm wierd - I did like semolina pudding as a child (which I think is pretty much the same thing)!

Goodness I had not come across this debate before. I used it with DS mainly to thicken up purees that I had made too wet. It was also the first "solid" food he ate - mixed with ebm. Am going to be doing all this again soonish - BLW sounds interesting - DS was on purees for ages, might give it a try with DD maybe.

I didn't use it - I thought the idea of it was pretty yucky, and so far I've been working on the principle that I'm not going to expect my daughter to eat something I wouldn't eat myself. It wasn't a disapproval thing, it was more that I didn't see the point of it. I started with mashed carrot instead.