Healthy Diet for Babies

In previous articles I was mentioning a lot a healthy diet. Many of you probably think as they eat some vegetables and eat some fruits they live already on a healthy diet. But there is much more to a real healthy diet. Today I want to start with the most important time in our life - babies. The first three years of our life are the most important ones. All habits, all believes, trusts, health issues and much, much more are based on what we learn, see and feel in these years. Anything done wrong in these years is hard to repair in later years.

Eating habits already are given to us while we still in the womb. If expecting mothers eating lots of sweats and junk food, it is not surprising that kids pick up these habits in no time, as they got the taste already in the womb. If the mother is an alcohol addict, it is more likely that the child will be an addict in later years too. The nice and cozy feeling in the womb with the additional of lots of alcohol will later come back while drinking alcohol. The nice and cozy feeling memory deep in our brains get stimulated. (In my teething article I wrote to drink a glass of wine for your teething baby. This is okay, but I believe all over a glass should be avoided at any time. As in all - little can help, lots can damage.) For expecting mothers it is really good to eat lots of vegetables (carrots, green leaves, beans, zucchini, etc), soy products (tempe, soy beans, tofu), egg, nuts (high quality - avoid peanuts), whole rice (best organic brown and red) and fruits (bananas, limes, papayas, pineapples (avoid watermelon and apples as they content lots of fertilizers and toxins)). A study made in the early 1920th in England - but very much forgotten these days - showed that mothers which would eat a vegetarian diet would have less problems in pregnancy, have easier births and less Caesarian operations.

Once your baby is born, the ONLY food for at least 5 - 6 months is breast milk. Get help and info from: Le Leche League. Because there is nothing better in this world. Marketing has done so much damage to the oldest and best way of feeding your baby. Okay, get this: Even if mother milk would have toxins as fertilizers in it... the amount is still much lower than in ANY bottled milk. - If for some kind of reason you need to bottle feed your baby than do it as short as possible. Introduce food with 3 months and see that your baby is off the bottle milk by the age of 8 months. Use Soy Milk products and a whole healthy diet, than you baby will be perfectly fine. - Mother milk is so great, because the connection between your baby and you is working so well, that your body knows exactly what to mix in the milk at the time your feeding your baby. It knows your baby might need lots of minerals in the evening and lots of vitamins in the morning. It knows if your baby is sick and mixes extra stimulation for the immune system of your baby. There are only 2 reasons not to feed - and I forgot them, but I will update the page soon - I think is was Tuberculosis and another decease. But if you got anything eels, just go on feeding. Never stop. Never. No matter if your mother in law tells you or anybody eels. Go on. Apart from that... it is soooo easy. Just shirt up, baby on the breast and go for it. No bottles, no washing, no buying expensive milk. Important is that YOU eat really healthy. No sugar, no milk products (yes, really), no wheat, no corn. And drink at least 3 liters. I often found that nursing mothers live on a small bottle of water. And than they say: "But I have no milk!" Well lady, your own body already needs at least 1 1/2 liters of water every day to function well and your baby needs around 1 1/2 liters too. So how you going to manage that with 1/2 liter of water? So drinking lots of pure and clean water. If you feed your baby from 500ml water you drink a day, you already teaching your child not to drink well, because it has to live on this small amount of breast milk dripping out your breast. Poor little thing. And this silly argument of: But than I have to go always to the toilet! Give me a break. You have legs to walk and arms to open you cloth. So what? Too lazy to walk, to lazy to use your arms? So why do you have a baby? Sorry, but sometimes it really gets me....

Once your baby grows well, than it starts to see you eating. And it gets the taste of all the tasty food you eating already via your milk. My girl always got crazy when I had papayas in the morning. I think it was the color, because once she got her first piece, she did not like it at all. In and out in no time. It took me 3 years now to get her eating them with joy. But now she loves them. My daughter was ready to start to eat when she was 5 months. I wanted to only nurse longer, but it was an impossible one to keep her away from food and I felt she was ready to go. Her first meal was red rice porridge. And she loved it. Some people think red rice is to heavy, but this is not true. We are made to eat this kind of things and not the white plastic rice they feed today to children. And once again. Once you get them hooked on white rice it is hard to get them eating the red one. A habit is born. Do not buy any ready made food for your baby! This is ALL junk food for starters. Means if you feed them first bottle milk and than the porridge out of the supermarket, than don't be surprised if your child is later crazy for Burgers and French Fries. You teach your child to eat this way since it was born! And again... Even they want to tell us that they add all this wonderful vitamins, where are the rest of the 10000 vitamins and minerals (see: vitamins 01/ 08/2006) which food contains? Are we really all so stupid to believe a prosecced powder out of a factory can make our babies strong and healthy??? Check out the companies who are doing baby milk powder and the first food mixes, they also producing all this junk food for kids and adults. They get you eating their food when you born and until the end of your life. Apart from that most of these bottle milks have sugar added. Sugar is a vitamin killer. Just briefly I was talking with a famous local dentist and he mentioned that most of the kids who have caries on their milk tooth most likely were bottle feed. He said, that there are hardly any breast feed babies how develop caries on their milk teeth. So cook for your child. Arguments like: "But I don't have time!" Do not count. Than I have to ask you: "Why did you get a child?" I am a working mother and I cooked every meal for my daughter until she was about 1 year. The time I saved with breastfeeding I put down for cooking for her. It is very easy. Boil 2 carrots on low temperature with skin and little water. When they soft take them out. Put one when it is cold in the fridge for tomorrow and smash the other one for the meal of your baby. She is going to love the taste of the plain carrot. You can mix it with some rice porridge from the morning which you heat up a little. And a little (very little sea salt) and as she is getting bigger a little drip of coconut oil and coriander powder. As she is growing she will always love the taste of carrots.. Smash a banana, add a little cinnamon powder and she has a light afternoon meal. And boiled an apple and smash it. Avoid tomatoes, corn, avocado, meat, wheat, sugar, mango, milk products, peanuts, MSG, potatoes and sweat potatoes, as many kids are allergic to them. Wait at least until they get 1 1/2 years and observe them well after eating. If your child gets any skin reactions or hyperactive, stay away. Kids can live and grow without them and stay much healthier. Most important: Feed your child organic food. Food today is of such low quality and contains to little minerals and vitamins if non organic. Save the money on bottle milk and buy organic food. You will see you save a lot of money! Check out your health food store, they might have lots of stuff you can use for your baby. And here a word about milk. Okay, we humans have breast which provides breast milk for humans. A service which works for many years given by mother nature. Cows have breasts to feed their babies. Cow milk is made for cow babies. NOT for human babies! It is hard to digest as the enzymes are bigger - clear - a cow is much bigger than you... Cows have 3 or 4 stomachs to digest. We have only one. Milk allergies are normal. Who can still eat and drink cow milk products after the age of 1 year is not normal, as mammals stop living from milk once they can eat. We are mammals.. And did you know that cow shit and the chemical reactions of it has a big influence on the ozone? It has been proven that cow farms produce so much methane gas that forests around them are suffering big time... Do you really need dairy products? Do you really need to teach your children to eat and drink dairy products? Calcium? A banana has as much calcium as a glass of milk and much more other things. Additional they great to prevent any kind of allergic reactions. Does milk give your child so much??? The only ones who are telling us that you need milk are the people selling it. I am living now more than 3 years without dairy products and I do not miss them anymore. My daughter is growing up without milk and is hardly ever sick. We both vegetarians and eat sea fish and eggs. When people see my daughter they always mention she is looking strong and healthy. But as soon as I mention we live vegetarian they more than surprised and have another look. It is the balanced natural diet which gives her all she needs. On the other side if I look at kids around me who living on this poor diets of bottled milk, white rice, crackers, white bread and ice cream for breakfast, I feel so sad. I see mothers sitting next to their kids with a bag of crisps at 9 o'clock in the morning and I want to cry. I saw a mother just briefly on the beach giving her 6 months old baby girl COCA COLA out of the bottle. I had to went over and ask her if she is completely mad. She did not understand what I was talking about... Is it really so hard for us to understand that all we are is what we eat and drink? The food you give your child today is the health it will have in the future. Sure, sometimes it is hard to keep up. Sometimes your child is just refusing to eat the plate of carrot. But don't give up. Offer it again and again. Eat together with your child. Show your baby that you love to eat carrots too. Don't you?

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