What is your policy re processed foods?

[CherryChoc]

I'm sure I'm going to get arrested by the mn kitchen police... but how strict are you with preventing your babies from eating processed foods?

We are doing BLW and I always try to have a selection of cooked veg sticks in the fridge in case we are having something totally unsuitable but today for my lunch I was having Heinz tomato soup and white bread and I let DS suck on a bit of bread which had been dipped in the soup (Yes, he ended up ORANGE!). I did look at the salt content and it's quite high in bread and the soup but he is only just 6 months so he didn't have much anyway - about 2 wide fingers of bread dipped in soup and then bits off a loaded spoon. Is it just the salt and sugar in processed food you have to worry about or other things as well? I haven't worried about sugar yet because he has only had savoury food but I don't know what the recommended amount of sugar is. He hasn't got any teeth yet. Do you need to worry about saturated fats?

I'm just worried I'm not offering him a big enough variation of foods - he usually (ie over the last 2 weeks when we started) has mainly carrots, courgettes, potatoes (wedges) or brown toast. He has tried leeks, mushroom, chicken, pork, beef, cucumber and egg (omelette) as well.

I want to start cooking more from scratch but I do use jar sauces if I make a curry or pasta bake (though have sent DP out for ingredients for a mushroom sauce to make that from scratch tonight!) and I need to get more fresh foods in the house. We are hopelessly disorganised wrt shopping!

We don't have loads in the house, tbh, but that's easy for me to say as I've always liked cooking, so when dd arrived not that much changed. Salt and sugar pretty high in processed foods, although the wee bit of soup and bread will have done no harm.

Best thing to do is scout about for a few basic recipes, batch cook and freeze - e.g. basic curry sauce - this is my current favourite staple - long list of ingredients, but easy to make, freezes well and you can shove just about anything in it - mushroom and chickpea the other day was fab. Basic tomato sauce for pasta, etc, veg or meat chilli. Fish cakes also great - mashed potatoes, tin of salmon (buy skinless and boneless), add maybe cooked spinach, broccoli or peas, flour your hands and shape into little cakes. Freeze really well, and then just fry in a little olive oil on both sides.

That curry sauce looks good... but I'm terrified of lentils because a teacher when I was in year 5 mentioned they are poisonous if incorrectly cooked! Can you get foolproof lentils? (Probably a stupid question!)

Red lentils are utterly foolproof - don't need soaking, boiling or anything. Some pulses you have to watch out for if starting from dried (e.g. kidney beans) but red lentils are fine - really nutritious and cheap too.

I try and cook from scratch as much as possible, but we do sometimes use jar pasta sauces for dh and I. They are high in salt generally though, but Heinz do a range of baby pasta sauces, which are actually not bad, dd likes them. So if I have been lazy and made pasta with a jar sauce for us, she has one of those!
Otherwise, the baby led weaning website has lots of good ideas for family friendly recipes and some are quite easy to prepare.

I cook normally DS meals from scratch, he does have dairylea dunkers though (he loves them) and he likes heinz baby rice puddings with mashed banana. I sometimes use frozen veg as it's easier and he does have crumpets. He hates jars, he did used to like them but isn't the slightest bit interested when offered one now.

we use frozen veg too - didn't think they were classed as processed food!
we also use philadelphia. Stirred into pasta with some frozen peas is a good quick lunch!

Nothing wrong with frozen veg, it has more vitamins in than most fresh veg which has been sitting around for a while.

Afaik, babies are supposed to have white bread/pasta/rice as it's easy to bulk them up with fibre that they do not need that leaves no room for the full fat diet they need.

I find it so much easier to make a tomato pasta sauce than worry about what's in a jar! Tin of tomatoes, some tomato puree, garlic and onion and a little oregano, add any other veg to hand.
White sauce I was always scared of, but I've done it a couple times now and it's quite simple, three ingredients plus cheese or parsley or dill etc. use it for cauliflower cheese, on fish or in a fish pie or lasagne (haven't tried those yet).

Boots do some Baby Organic stock cubes that I add to a casserole or cottage pie.

A little processed food now and then probably won't hurt, but it is usually not as convenient as we think.

I would like to know what the issue with sugar is? DS likes marmalade.

Cherrychoc, at poisonnous lentils!

I cook lentils often, dh and 4dcs still alive! Has anyone really been poisonned by lentils? Other than when you mistakenly add arsenic instead of salt?

wastingmy do you mean they are not supposed to have white bread?
and i thought babies weren't supposed to have sugar either?

IMO sugar is fine with moderation. Specially after a year, once they are walking they need some extra energy.