Weaning around the world....

[venetianred]

While weaning, both my children prefer really tasty food - if they won't eat something I sometimes pop in a tiny bit of chilli, or some coriander etc. At the moment DS's favourite foods are Lamb Tagine, Boeuf Bourguignon and spicy stir fried noodles and he is only 8 months.

Anyway, it made me wonder about weaning around the world. What foods do Chinese, Japanese, Italian, African, Brazillian parent etc introduce to their babies first and what are the kind of common meals to be eating at around 9-12 months?

Think I read that in India, it's BLW all the way! They give all their own meals to babies from weaning age. I watched a case study when doing my BF supporter course. I wish BLW had been encouraged when mine were weaning - would have been sooo much easier.

bump - I'm really interested about weaning in other cultures if anyone has any other experiences

I'm also very interested in this. I'm looking forward to this film coming out as it may well give us some insight!

www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/babies/

Would love to hear anything about African, Russian etc weaning practises.

luciemule - that's interesting about India. When you think about it, rice and light curries are ideal baby food, and they can always be 'mashed' a little for when they start off - and they can be quite sloppy.

squitten - thanks for the link. I will definitely go to see it.

I've just started to wonder lately if baby food is really necessary. There are perfectly good 'adult' foods that my DD and DS loved from the start. Are we actually ruining them, by starting them on a kind of food that they will not be eating as they grow up. Is this contributing to all the problems with children's food aversions.

Although during teething purees have been really handy.

Would love to hear any more about this.

MIL is chinese:
Rice with everything. Never baby rice, just normal rice cooked a special way so it becomes like rice pudding. Regularly uses ginger and garlic. Obsessive hygeine, and aversion to anything greasy or salty til about 2yrs old.

OP - I would seriously avoid chilli though. As I understand it even indian parents don't give chilli to babies as it's a mild poison. Any other strong spices are fine though.

hi
dh is east african and over there when we were weaning dd he would regularly chew up food and then regurgitate onto spoon to feed to her. Guess is what is done in villages if no electricity for food blenders etc.