Podcast

Best BLW Advice from the Leading Feeding Experts

  • How do you know when a baby is ready to start solid foods? Explained by Gill Rapley, founding philosopher of the baby-led weaning movement and co-author of the original baby-led weaning book
  • What is baby-led weaning and why is it better than spoon feeding? …also explained by Gill Rapley
  • Should I use food to help my small baby with catch up weight? Covered by Rosan Meyer, PhD, RD specialist in weight and growth charts, growth faltering and food allergies
  • Can babies with egg allergy ever eat eggs again? And how do I use an egg ladder? Answered by Carina Venter, PhD, RD and author of international pediatric food allergy guidelines and creator of the egg ladder used by families of babies with food allergy around the world
  • How can I get my baby tested for food allergy? And do food allergy tests work? Explained by David Stukus, MD, leading expert on pediatric and infant food allergies
  • How to treat baby eczema? How are eczema and food allergy related and linked? Answered by Rebecca Hartman, PhD, MD, Harvard affiliated dermatologist and food allergy mom
  • Can you use pouches with baby-led weaning? Why are pouches bad for babies and infant development? Dawn Winkelmann, MS, CCC-SLP tackles this one 
  • What is the best first food for a baby? Why white rice cereal is bad for babies…covered by Alan Greene, MD, founder of the White Out Movement to stop using white rice cereal as a first food for babies
  • What sensory experiences and sensory play do babies need when they are learning to eat? Noted feeding therapist and author of the original book on pre-feeding Marsha Dunn Klein, OT/R, MEd is teaching about sensory 101 for babies
  • Do I need to wait 3 to 5 days between new foods? Is it is safe to feed one new food every day to babies? Noted pediatric allergy researcher and pediatrician Ruchi Gupta, MD is answering this question

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE

Episode Description

When is my baby ready to start baby-led weaning? What does an allergic reaction to food look like? Why are pouches bad for babies? …in this episode I’m including some of the best baby-led weaning advice from the leading feeding experts who were featured on the podcast in the last year. Listen in to learn about the best first foods for babies to eat, why you don’t need to wait 3-5 days between trying new foods and what you can do if your baby has eczema to help reduce food allergy risk. 

Links from This Episode

null

null

Other episodes related to this topic:

Click here for episode transcript Toggle answer visibility

Marsha Dunn Klein (1s):

When we allow them to do that, their eating is internally motivated. They're eating because they're hungry, they're eating because they enjoy it. They're eating because they're curious, they're eating because they see other people around them eating it.

Katie Ferraro (15s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning. Here on the baby led weaning made easy podcast, I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Well, Hey guys, and welcome back for this episode. I wanted to do a Roundup of baby led weaning expert advice from a few selected guests who are on the baby led weaning made easy podcast in 2021. So for those of you who listen, you may know, I released two episodes each week, a mini BLW training each Monday, and then a guest expert interview episodes on Thursdays.

Katie Ferraro (1m 4s):

And so with the bonus episodes from the year added in, we had about 25 feeding expert guests interviews in 2021. And it's always hard to pick favorites, but I went through all of them and teased out 13 different pieces of advice from our experts that I thought would be particularly resonant for our audience. And our audience are primarily people like you, parents and caregivers of babies who are about to start solid foods, or are currently making the transition to solid foods using baby led weaning. So before each clip, I'm going to give a smidge of context, so you guys know who it is that's speaking and what they're talking about. And then also share the episode number in case it's something that you want to go back and listen to that whole episode, you can always find the full show notes and listen to that episode or read the transcript of a particular episode number.

Katie Ferraro (1m 47s):

If you go to blwpodcasts.com/episode number. So for example, this is episode 1 9 2. All of the links from the episodes mentioned will be on the show notes page for this episode at blwpodcast.com/192. Before we dive in, I just wanted to say how very grateful I am for each and every one of you who listened to the podcast. Having this platform to share evidence-based feeding info and bring you my mini BLW trainings and interview. Other feeding experts is certainly the joy of my professional life. So thank you because your downloads and ratings and reviews have kept us top rated in the parenting category all year long. The end of 2021 was such a surprise, totally off the charts for us with regards to reach and rankings.

Katie Ferraro (2m 33s):

And it makes me so happy that you guys are finding this info and it's striking a chord. So thank you for telling your friends about the podcast. And I know so many of you like me are working parents. So a lot of you guys are listening to the podcast on your commute to and from work, or maybe you're a stay at home or work at home mom, you're taking in episodes when you're folding laundry or doing the dishes. So wherever you are, when you're listening to this, I want you to know how grateful I am for you and with no further ado, here's some of the best baby led weaning advice from 2021 from the leading feeding experts. Okay. First up is no other than Gill Rapley, co-author of the original baby led weaning book. The founding philosopher of the baby led weaning movement.

Katie Ferraro (3m 14s):

None of the work that our team is doing here at the baby led wean team would of course be possible without Gill Rapley's seminal work in the field. And so for that, we are eternally grateful to her and to her work. So Gill has been very gracious with her time here on the podcast. I was looking back and in 2021, Gill Rapley was a guest on the podcast, four separate times in four different episodes. The first of which was episode 100, where Gill shared a little bit about the history of baby led weaning. So here's Gill Rapley explaining why she was inspired to coin the term baby led weaning and how it originated.

Gill Rapley (3m 50s):

It was about feeding being done by the baby, not to the baby. And that I think was quite a big shift. It was in line with what we were learning about breastfeeding, but it hadn't kind of permeated into the later aspects of feeding. Of course, what most people saw was simply a no spoons or no purees, because that was what it looked like in practice, but it's always been more than that. It's about trust between parents and child. I don't think there have been any recognition that we were often making, eating so miserable for babies, and then having to try and undo that. Quite a lot of the literature I looked at in the early days was around toddlers and older children, picky eating and food refusal.

Gill Rapley (4m 31s):

And so on and time, and again, I came across this golden rule, which was give the control back to the child, that's the way forward. And I just thought, why ever did we take it away in the first place?

Katie Ferraro (4m 42s):

Amen. Why did we ever take control away from the child in the first place? Gill was also back on the podcast in episode 102, where she discussed the future of baby led weaning. There was so much good stuff in that episode, I had to split it into two. So in episode 102, we were talking about our collective efforts to reshape the infant feeding landscape, such that our ultimate goals are that spoon-feeding would be considered the exception moving forward. And a baby led approach will be the rule or the norm. We're not there yet, but we're getting close. And here's Gill Rapley again.

Gill Rapley (5m 14s):

Depending on what study you read, they will tell you, you have to introduce new food to a baby eight times or 15 times or whatever, before he will accept it. I really struggle with that word accept. Where's the enjoyment in that? It's still so much of the language in the research is around getting babies to comply with what the adults want and assuming that babies don't want to eat. I mentioned before, when we were talking in our previous interview about the idea that we have to make eating fun, we have to just stop making it miserable. Babies will eat. They want to, but we also have to understand that their motivation for starting with solid food is probably nothing to do with hunger it's to do exploring their world and testing things out with their mouth and with all of their senses.

Gill Rapley (6m 3s):

And they discovered by chance that this stuff tastes good, fills their tummy, whatever, but that's not their initial motivation and all the time we make it about food itself. And then I think we're missing part of the way that we can understand baby.

Katie Ferraro (6m 17s):

And I hope you guys caught that. She said when babies are learning how to eat the baby's motivation for starting solid foods has nothing to do with hunger. We have to stop being so preoccupied with how much our babies are eating. We need to sit back, relax and give our babies ample time to learn how to eat. BLW does give your baby that much needed space. Up next is another favorite feeding expert of mine, Pediatric dietitian Rosan Meyer. Rosan specializes in food allergies as well as growth and measuring growth. And she was in episode 110, helping us understand why the recommendation that so many parents have smaller or prematurely born babies here, which is that they need to start solid foods early in order to help their babies with what's called catch-up wait.

Katie Ferraro (7m 6s):

That's actually a terrible recommendation. And here's Rosan Meyer, PhD, RD talking about why we do not want to start solid foods early for smaller babies for catch-up growth.

Rosan Meyer (7m 17s):

I see that now quite a lot. It worries me. If somebody says to catch up growth, you need to start solids. So there are a couple of things, you've already highlighted the oral motor skills. So that goes without saying, had control all of that, which actually means that it can be dangerous. But I think that two aspect from a nutritional perspective, that worry me. The first one, if I just use numbers. So breastmilk has got around 70 kilocalories. If you say for the, that rich hind milk and your formulas, unless you took a take an energy dense formula, it's very similar. But when you start with complimentary foods, you start with vegetables, fruit, you know, your porridges and those, they are inherently not very energy dense, but baby's stomach capacity are low.

Rosan Meyer (8m 3s):

So therefore what you're doing is even if you say, I'm just going to give a small amount, number one, you're giving a small amount for what benefit for 10, 15 kilocalories and three to four teaspoons. If I could have had, you know, an ounce more in terms of formula or in terms of breast milk. So calorie protein wise, I would get much more. So that's a wrong argument to say, okay, I'm going to use solids now for catch up the next argument. So let's say your pediatrician actually all forces you. I want to say, actually you need to start with the energy dense foods in a non-allergic child that might be yogurt, cheeses, you know, anything that has got fats, protein and calories.

Rosan Meyer (8m 44s):

Then my second concern is that breast milk is the ideal source of nutrition. So when we measure what you want to give you say, breast milk has got 6% of energy as protein. The evidence that we've got at the moment is if you force a child to give to high approaching too early on, it actually starts a cascade of metabolic responses within the child that increases the risk of obesity in later life. So although you might not see your child at that stage, you know, growing really fast, it actually sets a metabolic cascade off. So high protein diets. And I think per se, I want to just say very, very high protein diets very early on.

Rosan Meyer (9m 27s):

It's really not recommended for babies.

Katie Ferraro (9m 29s):

Thank you, Rosan, for reminding us that we don't need to percent rate on protein, right? If you guys are feeling stress about your baby's growth or growth chart issues, you've got to go to the show notes for rose episode 110, because she linked this amazing training video that she did on how to accurately obtain infant height and weight. And it's going to blow your mind because almost certainly it's being done in properly in your pediatrician's office. But the problem is that she discussed in that episode is that there's lots of things going on in the pediatrician's office. And they're not necessarily willing to admit that obtaining height and weight is being done inaccurately. And I, as a feeding expert, don't want you to feel shamed or inadequate about your baby's growth because of inaccurate measurements that are driving inaccurate data on the baby's growth chart.

Katie Ferraro (10m 11s):

So that video that Rosan did in the show notes page, it's at blwpodcast.com/110. It's already been downloaded so many times. I'm so glad people are finding it and it's helping. Another one of our feeding experts who made a few appearances this year is a real life friend and colleagues of Rosan. She's also a leading authority in pediatric food allergy research, and that's Carina Venter, PHD, RD, and Carina was on the podcast in episode 124, talking about using an egg ladder for re-introducing egg in babies who have egg allergy. Now, this is a really important episode. If you've been told that your baby has an egg allergy, or maybe you have a diagnosis, a lot of you think your baby might have quote-unquote egg intolerance, which Carina covers in this episode and explains it.

Katie Ferraro (10m 54s):

That's not even really a real thing, but here's Carina Venter talking about egg ladders. She's also done a lot of work with milk ladders. So that's mentioned in this episode as well.

Carina Venter (11m 2s):

I was so excited when you asked me to come talk about the egg ladder, because I think I published the first ever ladder, which was the milk ladder. And it was because the doctors emailed me and kept asking me what comes before chocolate candy and what goes after a muffin. And so I have, well, I better come up with some level of structure of introducing milk, but today we're going to talk about the egg ladder. And so basically how we develop the ladders is we look at the particular protein. So in this case, the egg protein. We look at foods containing the egg protein, and we then list them or grade them according to amount of a protein present and time of heating and cooking.

Carina Venter (11m 43s):

So at the bottom of the lab that you would normally get a cookie, which is well baked, it's got a very small amount of egg protein in, and then as you go up the ladder, you may end up with something like custard or ice cream, which has got a lot of egg in. It's heated at a very low temperature, which is about a 60 degrees Celsius, which I think is about 120 Fahrenheit or perhaps 135 Fehrenheit for only a limited number of times. So, so that's really how it's structured. Smallest amount of egg to highest amount of egg, and then highest temperature and longest time of cooking up to lowest temperature, to lowest amount of cooking.

Katie Ferraro (12m 25s):

Okay. And egg ladders for babies or children with egg intolerance or egg allergy?

Carina Venter (12m 31s):

So first of all, egg intolerance, you know, it's the definitions again, that fascinates me. We don't actually see egg intolerance. We really talk about the non IgE mediated egg allergies, which some people might refer to as intolerances. But I do want to make sure to say that really strictly speaking, it's an allergy because it's mediated by the immune system. And then we have the proper IgE mediated or immediate atopic allergies. So in most cases, these ladders are safest to use in the non IgE mediated egg allergy or the egg intolerances. We in the U.S. do not use the ladders for IgE mediated egg allergies, but it is very successfully used in the United Kingdom.

Carina Venter (13m 17s):

There's a number of studies coming out of Ireland soon, where they use the egg ladders at home or in primary care in children with egg allergies. And it's also very successfully used in Canada.

Katie Ferraro (13m 29s):

One thing I absolutely love about this podcast is being able to bring on feeding experts from around the world. So Carina is based in Colorado now, but she literally serves on every major international pediatric food allergy guidelines committee. She's always sharing what practices are being employed in different countries and why you may or may not see some of these in the United States as much. She truly has her finger on the global pulse of pediatric food allergies. And we have a lot of food allergy content on the podcast. In 2021, I was honored to have another leading pediatric food allergy expert. Join us, Dr. David Stukus. Dr. Stukus is on social @allergykidsdoc. He is a great wealth of info. He's got a great sense of humor, and he has that unique trait that I really wish more researchers and physicians also shared.

Katie Ferraro (14m 13s):

He takes complicated medical information and puts it into actionable steps that we can take with our babies in real life. In episode 125, Dr. Stukus and I were discussing why false positive results in food allergy testing are so common. And this was in response to some previous conversations around parents who we know are getting marketed to really heavily by supplement companies these days. And these supplement companies are preying on parents' fears about introducing allergenic foods and that companies promote these expensive supplements, stick packets, and powders that you need to mix in the milk. When we all know that babies can safely eat real food versions of the allergenic foods, we don't need expensive supplements. So here's me asking Dr. Stukus about what ends up the resultant fear of food allergies.

Katie Ferraro (14m 55s):

That's now like inherent in parents today and what sometimes manifests in their desire to blanket test for every food allergy under the sun. I really appreciate your down to earth approach in recommending food first, because we are kind of moving into this arena in food allergy prevention, where I think there are a lot of brands out there trying to scare parents into thinking that babies can't eat food based versions of these potentially allergenic foods. So the irony is not lost on me. Are you asking me if it's safe for my baby to be fed food? I am not joking you every single day, I get messages as I'm sure you do as well from parents who asked that very question like there, the fear factor is so high with this when the absolute or overall risk is actually quite low and not discounting how serious food allergies are, but for so many parents, they listen.

Katie Ferraro (15m 40s):

Cause this is also scary. I'm just going to get my baby tested for everything. Before I try any of these foods, is that a good approach?

David Stukus (15m 48s):

That's a terrible approach. It's going to cause more anxiety because you're going to get, you're going to find false positives. Eventually, if you do enough of those tests on enough children, you're going to find false positives. And it's really hard for a lot of parents to overcome seeing that positive result and understanding what that means, what that doesn't mean. So an elevated IgE test only indicates sensitization. It doesn't mean you're allergic. If you're eating a food, but sensitize your tolerance. In fact, if somebody's eating a food and they're tested for that food, and they're told to stop eating that food because of an elevated IgE that can actually create food allergy. And this just makes me so angry because there are well-intentioned physicians everywhere doing these tests on babies with eczema or other symptoms that aren't related to food allergy at all.

David Stukus (16m 28s):

They tell parents to take the food out of their diet. By the time I see them months later, and we try to reintroduce it. They have an allergic reaction. They actually caused an allergic reaction in somebody who is tolerant, but sensitized by telling them to take it out of their diet. That's a real problem. That's one example of why these tests are problematic. There are now at home versions of these, which is a terrible idea, just, you know, sort of quote- unquote scan for 200 different food allergies or food sensitivities, which also is not actually a medical, you know, tested as validated in the evaluation food sensitivity. That's the IgG testing, but none of these are screening tests. So we shouldn't be using them in that manner at all.

Katie Ferraro (17m 5s):

That was Dr. David Stukus and episode 125, a great one to listen to, if you're feeling pressure to get blanket food, allergy testing, especially if your baby has never reacted or truly reacted to a food. He breaks that down in episode 125, we had some more food allergy advice coming to us in episode 129. This was an interview with Dr. Rebecca Hartman, MD, mPH. Dr. Hartman is a Harvard affiliated dermatologist. She's also the mom of a baby who has multiple food allergies. So in this episode, we were talking about the relatively new research or emerging research that links eczema and food allergy risk. Here's Dr. Hartman talking about eczema and food allergy risk.

Dr. Rebecca Hartman (17m 45s):

Yeah, so it's interesting. When, before I had my son, I just always thought they were linked because it's genetic, like people who are predisposed to eczema are predisposed to allergies. They call it the atopic March. They can get allergic rhinitis and they can get asthma. But as I did more reading and learned with my own son, they actually, people now think that atopic dermatitis or eczema in and of itself is a direct risk factor of food allergy because the skin barrier is abnormal. It's unhealthy in eczema atopic dermatitis, and this can allow allergens in the air or in contact with our skin to see the immune system in a way that they normally would not be able to do so. And there's some thought that seeing the allergens in your gut through eating promotes a healthy response to these allergens, where seeing them in your skin does not.

Dr. Rebecca Hartman (18m 30s):

And that's probably part of why the early introduction is helpful, where we're showing these allergens through the gut and the guts were responding and saying, okay, these are safe. These are not a problem. So, unfortunately for, for babies, with eczema, they're at high risk to have the allergens be exposed through their skin and develop an unhealthy response to them. And that's probably why my son before I'd even tried peanut butter had already had a reaction, but he may have gotten it some through the breast milk. There's some thoughts that it actually the peanut protein in some women in one study about half the women did pass it in their breast milk and have to not.

Katie Ferraro (18m 60s):

I was actually a little hesitant to do that interview because eczema is so subjective, right? Like literally every single baby has eczema. And I didn't want parents walking away mistakenly thinking that their baby has the rare case of severe eczema that we know is the one that increases the risk of peanut allergy. But if you're also slightly confused about eczema and food allergy risk episode 129 with Dr. Hartman is a great one for you to get some clarity. All right. So 2021 was also the first year that we celebrated the first ever national baby led weaning day because we also got it designated July 1st, will forever be known as national baby led weaning day. It's also Canada day, I know. We chose July 1st because that is six months into the calendar year.

Katie Ferraro (19m 41s):

Basically, if your baby was born on January 1st, six full calendar months later, it would be July 1st. And we would likely be celebrating your baby's first time trying baby led weaning. And we use this day to honor the work of Gill Rapley. Again, the founding philosopher of the baby led weaning movement. Gill came back on the podcast in episode 140 to talk about national baby led weaning day. She's the perfect person to honor on this day because of the very important work she's done highlighting the importance of waiting until six months to start solid foods. Here's Gill Rapley on why to wait.

Gill Rapley (20m 16s):

So now that we know that they really don't need it before six months, and we know that at six months, they're ready to reach and grab it, then we don't have to worry about the need for food. We just have to offer, offer the opportunity to explore. So for me, the reliable signs of readiness to engage with solid foods, whether or not that means eating them or the ability to sit up right, steadily enough, to be able to reach out without toppling over, but somebody still needed a little bit of support around their hips. That's fine. able to grab things using their whole hand, not the pincer grip that comes late, but with their whole Palm and being interested in bringing things to them out. That's it. The old signs we were told about, which as I mentioned, kind of relate to being four months old, rather than them being ready for anything in particular things like waking at night or watching parents eating that.

Gill Rapley (21m 7s):

They're just things that babies do. They're not about a sign of anything other than being a baby and probably being around about four months. Although of course we know that breastfeeding babies probably not set through the night at all by then anyway, why would we expect them to bend this kind of always been issues around weight. If your baby's a certain weight she's ready for solids, or if he's actually not heavy enough, he's ready for those really relevant. Again, food babies need in the first six months is breast milk or formula. The other one that's always bugged me is the tongue fast reflex show. You have to look out for that. If you're going to do something to a baby who might not be ready, but number one, you're not going to do it to him. If it's baby led weaning, he's going to do it himself. So he's not going to confused about whether his tongue frost is present or not.

Gill Rapley (21m 50s):

And second of all, the tongue trust has as always gone by six months, unless you have a baby who really is not developing. Typically, it's just not an issue. And I guess the last one that we're often told is that we need to demonstrate the babies are ready to swallow food before we give them food. And that, excuse me, how can you demonstrate? They're ready to swallow it without giving it to them. So like, if you have to test for it, that's weird too. And as I think of kind of, my care is the swollen comes later. It's the exploring and the engaging that matters.

Katie Ferraro (22m 21s):

Yes, it does. Thank you, Gill. And if you need more Gill Rapley advice in your life, she was back on the podcast again in episode 142, that one was debunking. The biggest BLW myths with Gill Rapley, PhD. There was so many good tidbits of advice. I couldn't pick one. So just go listen to that whole episode, if you missed it the first time around and speaking of fabulous advice, of course, I had my good friend and fellow BLW expert, Dawn Winklemann on the podcast a few times in 2021, 1 of my favorites and yours too, because the downloads were insane was episode 149 with Dawn. She's also a feeding therapist and a speech language pathologist. She's the feeding expert for EzPz. So she designs all of their feeding products. This particular episode, we weren't talking about gear.

Katie Ferraro (23m 1s):

We were talking about pouches and the episode 149 was called pouches. Why your baby doesn't need to suck pureed food out of pouches with Ms. Dawn SLP. So here's Dawnn talking kind of high level about just a few of the drawbacks of using baby food pouches.

Dawn Winkelman (23m 16s):

Yes, eating is the most enjoyable sensory experience. A baby has the opportunity to experience in their lifetime. But if we give them a plastic pouch where they can't see the food, they can't smell the food, they can't touch the food, they can't hear the food. Then we're essentially stripping away. Baby's sensory exposure at mealtime, and this can result in poor eating habits. It can result in food refusals. And it's really important for us to understand why that can happen is because they're eating directly out of a plastic container and really not falling in love with kale. Like you're just giving that example earlier. Like they're not falling in love with kale. They're falling in love with this plastic pouch that they can swallow so easily because they're using a swelling pattern.

Dawn Winkelman (24m 4s):

That is an immature pattern. We want them to be able to have the sensory experience of touching that food and hearing how that food is moving around into their mouth, seeing the food, smelling the food. So then they're really building a relationship with that food, not a relationship with manufactured products. The biggest drawback for me is that they don't promote a healthy development of feeding and swallowing skills. So pouches encourage cycling, which is an immature swallowing pattern. We want babies to learn a mature swelling pattern of chewing and swallowing, just like you and I do when babies are consistently given pouches, they tend to have trouble progressing the finger foods and usually need to see me for feeding therapy.

Dawn Winkelman (24m 47s):

So we know that studies show that a late introduction of soft, appropriately sized strips of food is associated with picky eating and other feeding difficulties later in a baby's life. And this can happen when babies are given pouches so frequently. If it's an occasional, you know, pouches here or there, I just asked families to pour that into a bowl or offer it onto a baby led spoon.

Katie Ferraro (25m 12s):

I love learning from Dawn. I love teaching with her too. We live co-teach our a hundred first foods program a few times together each year. So we're actually going to be opening up the doors for enrollment again in early 2022. So if you want to get on the email waitlist to be alerted when our program is reopened, you can add your name to the email waitlist for me and Dawn's hundred first foods program, just go to 100firstfoods.com. And this is one of my favorite programs to teach because it's really the only place where you can get live weekly training and teaching from two of the leading BLW experts out there. Dawn and I are there to answer your individual questions every week. If you ever find yourself getting stuck, starting solid foods safely with baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (25m 52s):

So again, that site is 100firstfoods.com to get signed up for me and Dawn's joint email list. And we'll let you know when our life a hundred first foods program is open again. Now, one of the foods you will not find on my hundred first foods list is white rice cereal. I had the opportunity to interview a personal hero in the field of infant feeding pediatrician, Dr. Alan Greene, he's the founder of the white out movement. And in episode one 60, we tackle the topic of why white rice cereal should not be your baby's first food with Dr. Alan Greene. Here's Dr. Greene talking a little bit about the drawbacks of utilizing white rice cereal, infant feeding, and why he's working hard to get his fellow pediatricians to stop promoting it as a first food for babies.

Alan Greene (26m 35s):

Another thing that I think could be really helpful is to think through why do we feed babies solid foods in the first place? And pretty much there's three reasons. One is to nutrition right then for that exciting time of life, but they're already getting the nutrition they need from breast milk or a great formula they need to, and the white rice cereal doesn't add anything to that. The second reason is to create a great microbiome. The microbiome, the beneficial bacteria in the gut are established. And as that first year or two, and it's by the food that you're feeding them and a white rice cereal is building the wrong kind of microbiome. And then thirdly is to teach the flavors. Kids are going to love, and you don't want to teach kids to love processed white flour.

Katie Ferraro (27m 19s):

All right, so we've got obesity and the metabolic situations, we've got the flavor and taste acquisition. We've got the wrong type of microbiome. What else can we add to the list of reasons why we don't want to feed? I mean, I would add costs because it costs extra money to go and buy a special food for a baby, when you could just be feeding foods that the rest of the family is eating. What beyond that? I mean,

Alan Greene (27m 37s):

Well, another really good one. It's arsenic rice is a plant that tends to pull out whatever's in the soil in which can be a great thing. If the soil is good and not contaminated, but much of the process rice cereal does have arsenic in it, both the FDA and the academy of pediatrics recommended minimizing the amount of rice that kids get in the first year.

Katie Ferraro (27m 57s):

Dr. Greene is so right. There's not any food that we want to feed to a baby every day, but especially we need to steer clear of rice foods because of that potential for arsenic toxicity. Even if you're talking organic rice cereal, it doesn't matter. The risk is still there. The next expert on the docket is Marsha Dunn Klein, the lady literally wrote the book on pediatric feeding. Marsha is an occupational therapist. She's a feeding therapist, the founder of the get permission Institute. And she joined us on episode 170, which was also one of the most downloaded guest interviews of the year, because she was talking about everyone's favorite topic, sensory issues. That's right. Sensory 101. What motivates babies to eat with Marsha Dunn Klein.

Katie Ferraro (28m 38s):

Here's Marsha talking a little bit about what our roles are in feeding and what baby's roles are and why we need to stay in our own lane as parents, when it comes to starting solid foods with our babies.

Marsha Dunn Klein (28m 48s):

So as you said, it is not our grownup job to get food in children, period. It is our job to offer food to children and have them take in as much as they want, as much as they can in the way they can and stop when they're ready. When they do that, when we allow them to do that, they're eating is internally motivated. They're eating because they're hungry, they're eating because they enjoy it. They're eating because they're curious, they're eating because they see other people around them eating it. They're eating because it's interesting. And the first part of that, that I went through quickly was they're eating because they're hungry. So one of the things we want to do when we offer children, food is initially, we're just, we're offering food at various times during the day, but gradually that kind of blends itself into a structure of here's a meal, and then here's a break and then here's a meal, and then here's a break.

Marsha Dunn Klein (29m 41s):

So children have the opportunity, the, of being hungry at a mealtime because sometimes families get pretty excited about sort of offering food all day long food and drink and juice and food and snacks and all day. And when kids don't have the privilege of having some hunger at meal time, they're not quite as motivated to try some new things. So from a motivation perspective, we would like that motivation to be internal coming from the child. What can happen unfortunately is that some parents, some grownups sort of emphasize the external motivators said this, and you can have a sticker if this, and then you can have your dessert eat this because I want you to finish everything on your plate, because I told you to so rewards and stickers and bribes and pressure are external motivators to eat.

Marsha Dunn Klein (30m 29s):

And what we don't want to do is teach children. They're eating because they're grownup said. So they're eating because of those external motivators. We want them to eat because we offered and they ate what they could of what was offered from internal motivation. Katie, you know, that there's lots of grownups that we had to finish everything on our plate. And there was a lot of pressure for us to eat and we sort of was track. And so some grownups don't eat enough and some grownups eat too much and have challenges with their eating because they lost track of being internally motivated to eat when they were younger. And then it takes a while for week grownups to figure that out.

Katie Ferraro (31m 6s):

Thank you, Marsha. We love learning from you. I was also really excited to bring you guys in interview with noted food allergy researcher and author Ruchi Gupta MD MPH. Dr. Gupta was on in episode 180, taking a lot of your questions in our food allergy FAQ episode. And one of the most commonly asked questions that I get is Katie, If you're introducing five new foods per week to a baby, how does that work? When pediatricians say you need to wait three to five days between new foods? Well, Ruchi Gupta, who is also a pediatrician has some thoughts. And here's her response on that question? So regarding the three to five day, wait, I mean, this is a huge pain point because still in American academy of pediatric publications coming out this year, it says, wait a few days between new foods.

Katie Ferraro (31m 48s):

And I think it's so important that the leaders in feeding and food allergy are out there saying, listen, there's absolutely no data to support waiting three to five days between new foods. And I was curious just to your thoughts, or to hear your thoughts, because if we know the vast majority of allergic reactions to food occur within minutes and up to no more than two hours following the ingestion of food, where in the world is this three to five day wait thing coming from like babies can not achieve diet diversity that they need. If we're waiting five days between introducing new foods and how can we get rid of it as my bigger question?

Ruchi Gupta (32m 18s):

Well, if you figure that out, I'm ready to serve on that committee with you right beside you, because we do need to get rid of it. And there is no data. You know, when we did this study with pediatricians, we searched literature, we went to books, we were trying to find anything to show the value of waiting such a long period of time. And we couldn't find anything. I don't know if it was from industry when we started bottling foods and, and know it took a couple of days to finish a bottle. I don't know where it came from or who started it, but no data that we can find so totally with you, allergenic reactions happen really quickly. So waiting is not to prevent an allergic reaction. And the common allergens are not like sweet potatoes and avocado and bananas and applesauce.

Ruchi Gupta (32m 60s):

You know, that's just not what kids tend to react to. So feel comfortable introducing new foods more frequently, at least daily, you know, if not every other day, if you're nervous, but again, no medicalization. I mean, we used to introduce foods with multiple spices and ingredients in it to babies, whatever you were eating, we didn't have the opportunity to introduce single food items in the past. And so yes. Get back to basics.

Katie Ferraro (33m 25s):

Back to basics or on it. Thank you, Dr. Gupta.

Katie Ferraro (37m 23s):

Wow. Okay. So much great advice from these feeding experts last year, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who came on the podcast in 2021 and shared their time and talents with our audience. Your work and your research, and your practice is so important to us as parents and other credentialed feeding professionals who listen to the podcast too. We're all working together to help parents and caregivers give their babies a safe start to solid food. So you're all honorary members of the baby led dream team, right? I'm going to link up all of the episodes covered in this episodes on the show notes, which you can find at blwpodcast.com/192. Thank you so much for listening and for being a part of this amazing baby led weaning community, happy new year!

null

The Program Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro

A step-by-step digital program for starting solid foods safely and navigating the original 100 FIRST FOODS™ meal plan with baby-led weaning.

  • Baby-led weaning recipes EXPERT-LED, PROVEN APPROACH TO EATING REAL FOOD
  • Video training CONCISE VIDEO TRAININGS TO MASTER BABY-LED WEANING
  • Feeding schedule and meal plans 100 FIRST FOODS DAILY MEAL PLAN WITH FOOD PREP VIDEOS

Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners Free Workshop

Is your baby ready to start solid foods, but you’re not sure where to start? Get ready to give your baby a solid foundation to a lifetime of loving real food…even if you’re feeling overwhelmed or confused about this next stage of infant feeding.

REGISTER FOR FREE WORKSHOP