What is a Combination Food?

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2 (41s):

And the problem with offering a combination multi textured food like lasagna, let's say to an early eater, is that that food contains so many ingredients and textures and foods and flavors and tastes that your baby who's never had anything in their mouth except breast milk or formula, is certainly not equipped to handle yet. However, when you get into phase two of baby-led weening, you certainly can start on those combination foods, but early on we stick to the individual isolated foods for a number of safety related reasons. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weening here on the baby-led weening made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning.

2 (1m 36s):

Hi guys, welcome back. In today's episode we're gonna be talking about what is a combination food, and I'd like to start each of these mini baby led weenie training episodes with A B L W tip of the day. And the first tip of the day is probably the most important one, which is your baby doesn't even need to be experimenting with combination foods until they enter the second phase. Phase two of baby led weening that comes after we've been doing baby led weenie for at least eight weeks with the individual foods. So if you're in phase one, so you just started baby-led weaning, or you're within the first eight weeks, come back and listen to this episode later or you can listen to it now. Put pocket the information or put it in the back of your brain until you hit that second eight weeks because we don't want to do any combination foods too early for babies.

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We'll talk about why that could be potentially dangerous and hang tight cuz I'm gonna give you some examples of combination food recipes that you can start doing for your baby once they hit that phase two mark. And by that point, you're gonna be a lot more confident in your baby's ability to handle multi textured foods when you hit that second phase of baby-led weaning. Alright, so what is a combination food? A combination food can also be called a multi textured food. It's where we're introducing a variety of textures at one time in one food to a baby. It's not something that we do for early eaters, so I'm gonna back it up. What then do we do for early eaters if we don't do combination foods? Well, in my programs in phase one of baby-led weaning, which is the first eight weeks we do single solitary, isolated foods, right?

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Your baby needs lots of time to learn how to eat. Okay? My colleague and friend Don Winkleman, she comes on the podcast a lot and we co-teach some workshops and different programs together and one of our examples that we use is like why we don't feed six month old babies. Lasagna, okay, what's happening with lasagna? Okay, lasagna. Think of all the different ingredients and flavors and textures and tastes that go into lasagna. Okay? You guys know babies could eat a lot more foods than we give them credit for, but lasagna is not one that a six or seven month old eater eats. Okay? Because let's talk about the different textures, right? There's cooked pasta in there, there's tomatoes in there, there could be ground meat and melted cheese. All of these variety of textures to drop that on. A baby who like has only ever had breast milk or formula in their mouth, there's absolutely no way they're going to be able to handle that level of complexity with regard to the texture.

2 (3m 49s):

Okay? From an allergenic standpoint, take a look at what's in lasagna. In the pasta, there's wheat in the cheese, there's cow's milk protein. If you're using egg to mix with a ricotta, another cow's milk protein, there's egg protein. Like we don't throw three different brand new allergenic foods on a baby in one day, right? If the baby was going to have an allergic reaction to one of those allergenic foods, how would we know which one caused it if we're mixing 'em all together? Okay, so there's a number of different reasons why we don't have babies eat foods like lasagna early on. But could your 12 month old baby lasagna? Heck yeah. Because early on six months ago in phase one of baby-led weening, you started with the individual isolated foods. You did tomato in a way that was safe for the baby on its own. You were offering different types of meat in a way that was safe for the baby on its own.

2 (4m 31s):

You introduced the wheat allergen perhaps as cooked pasta, very soft, safe pieces that were cut into strips about the size of your adult pinky finger or shaped it that way to begin with. So you did all the individual components of lasagna on their own in the earliest phases. Phase one of baby-led weening, those first eight weeks when your baby is learning so much about how to pick the food up and eventually get it to their mouth and move it around and move it to the back of their mouth, maybe gag on it, ugh, that's uncomfortable, push it forward, spit it out, recover from the gag, pick it back up. I mean there are lots of little micro steps in learning how to eat and the individual foods are what I do in my programs that's based on experience, but it's also based on research about textures that babies can handle at different ages.

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And we know from research that texture is important and actually the babies who've had the least amount of experience with textures other than purees, those are the babies who are actually at elevated risk of choking. So while I know you might feel comfortable just doing purees, I teach a purees for a few days approach to baby-led weening three max where we would puree foods that we could otherwise offer in soft solid strip form. I just do it for a few days and oftentimes that's just to help the parents bridge their anxiety gap from going from that purely liquid diet, which is breast milk or formula to different textured foods so your baby can start on different textured foods. We just prefer to do that with single isolated foods. Again, I do it for the first eight weeks of baby-led weaning in my programs.

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Following my five step feeding framework, we introduce five new foods per week. So on Monday we do a new fruit Tuesday, a new vegetable Wednesday, a starchy food Thursday, a protein food, and Friday and allergenic food. We pull those foods from their respective categories inside of the hundred first foods list. You're doing five new foods a week. There's four weeks in a month, so that's 20 new foods a month. So by the end of the first eight weeks, the end of phase one, your baby has had 40 different foods. If you're just starting out, you might feel really anxious about your baby's capacity to try different foods and maneuver and manipulate around their mouth and recover from a gag and try allergenic foods. All these things may seem scary, but once you've done 40 foods and you've been doing one new food a day, five days a week, offering foods one to two times a day at the six to seven month mark, the level of confidence that you're going to have when your baby has been doing this for eight weeks is remarkably different than what you felt starting out.

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So for those of you who are still anxious about getting into that second phase, trust that by the time your baby has had the opportunity to try 40 different foods in those first eight weeks, you'll be really confident about their ability to handle the combination foods that come in phase two. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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2 (8m 17s):

So when can babies start eating combination foods? As I mentioned, I generally start that in the second eight weeks. So phase two of baby-led weaning. Again, this is when your baby has been already doing it for eight weeks. If you started at six months of age, it's generally around the eight month mark when we move into combination foods. But sometimes parents will come into our program, the baby's eight months of age and they've never had anything except purees. Well, we don't just move them right to combination foods cuz that baby does not have the skillset to handle that yet. They need that eight weeks of practice. In many ways they're almost like a six month old. So we make adjustments, but generally after your baby has been eating for about eight weeks, or if you're following the five step feeding framework when you've done 40 foods, you'll be really confident that your baby can definitely move to these different combination foods.

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So that's when you're starting to make foods like fritters for example, do a lot of content on fritters cuz it's a great way for your baby to be able to pick up and feed themselves those smaller pieces of cooked whole grain. Cuz in the starchy foods list in the hundred first foods list, there's 20 different grains and many of them are whole grains, which parents are like, I don't know how to feed sorghum or quinoa. And so I teach them and share recipes on how to make fritters. Oftentimes they're we're using an egg as a binding agent. So that's an allergenic food you've tried on your own. Sometimes it's combined with another ingredient, maybe a different type of chopped protein or a cooked vegetable frying 'em into fritters and having the baby pick it up and feed it to themselves. Are there babies prior to eight months of age who can safely pick up and eat fritters? Yes, occasionally we see that, but we see a lot more success with the babies being able to feed those foods if they are in phase two.

2 (9m 44s):

So those are the babies who do better with the combination foods and it's certainly much safer. So the combination food is one that has multiple textures. Some other examples are I have a mini mushroom meatloaf recipe that's very popular inside of my program. Mushrooms can be a challenging food to feed to babies because rubbery mushrooms, even if you cook them to death and butter and wine and make them delicious. And by the way, babies can have foods cooked in wine because the wine cooks off. It's not a concern from the alcohol ingestion standpoint, but the texture is concerning of sauteed mushrooms cuz it's not safe enough for babies, especially without teeth to eat. But we can work the mushrooms into a meatball batter. Is that what you call raw meatball? Someone recently gave me a meat baller, by the way. Side note, game changer. It's like a little cookie scoop but for meatballs and a couple different sizes and I make 'em for babies and then I smash 'em with the palm of my hands, very satisfying to flatten them and then can bake them or fry them and cut 'em into strips about the size of your adult pinky finger.

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Increasingly I'm making a lot of my combination food recipes like the mini mushroom meat loafs or sorghum fritters. I'm baking them in a rectangular mini loaf pan because they get the perfect size where you can then cut them into strips about the size of your adult pinky finger, which is safe for your baby to pick up and feed to themself for baby-led weening. So over on our YouTube channel, we've been sharing a lot about the mini loaf pan and some of the recipes that go in there. If you wanna see what some of these fritters look like, be sure to check us out on YouTube. The channel is baby led weaning. If you subscribe, you can get notified. You put out new videos every single week so you can see some of this stuff that you're learning about put into action. If you're interested in grabbing that a hundred first foods list, I give it to everybody on my free workshop called Baby Led Weaning for Beginners.

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This is all about how to get your baby to eat a hundred foods before they turn one. And inside of that workshop I introduce you to one of my paid programs where I actually show you the recipes and the instructions and videos on how to make all of the hundred first foods on the list. And I also have a hundred baby led weaning recipes for stage two or phase two combination foods inside of that program. I think a lot of families get excited about baby-led weaning. They do the single foods, they get a few foods under their belt, maybe get up to 40, move into phase two and they're like, ah, I don't know what foods, what recipes to make in order order to help my baby try all these foods. That's where those phase two combination food recipes come in. But if you're in the earlier phases, just do the single foods.

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You don't need to bother yourself about making any fancy recipes and at the end of the day, you don't need to make any fancy recipes. I just put them inside of the program cuz some families are like, I wanna experiment and try some of these new foods. And they get really gung-ho about all of the foods their baby starts eating. And when your baby moves to combination foods, if you're not there yet, when you get into phase two, the second eight weeks of baby-led weaning, I call it like the golden age of baby-led weaning, your baby is jamming on feeding themselves, they you're drop that first milk feed, now they're eating two to three times a day. Other people are like, oh my gosh, how does your baby eat like that? And inside of my program, I do weekly live office hours where parents can come on and ask their questions. And we were just talking about the eight month fork in the road where babies who are spoonfed at eight months continue to only eat purees and will only eat purees.

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And by the time they get to 12 months, they'll have at most maybe 10 or 12 foods under their belt. But the eight month old babies who've been doing baby-led weaning for eight weeks, those are the babies who start jamming on all of the different textures, the combination foods they're feeding themselves. You're starting to drop a milk feed all of a sudden you turn the corner at nine months and baby starts getting more of their nutrition from food and less from milk, and you're working towards your goal of by 12 months of age. Most of baby's nutrition is coming from food and not from infant milk anymore. That is weaning in action. And so that eight month mark is very, very crucial. If you guys wanna check out this program or learn more about this approach, be sure to sign up for the baby led Weaning for Beginner's workshop and give everyone on that workshop a copy of the hundred first Foods list and I'll tell you more about the program where you can learn about how you can help your baby safely move through these different phases.

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So hopefully they can achieve independent eating by the time they turn 12 months of age. You can sign up for this week's workshop times@babyledweening.co. If you already have the hundred first foods list. I'd love to hear in the comments on YouTube the different foods that you've been trying and which ones you liked or which ones you're struggling with. I read every single comment there. I also read every single podcast review. So thank you guys for all the great reviews. I get some of my best ideas for new episodes from podcast reviews and YouTube comments. So anytime you have a baby-led weaning question, I'm there to help you. Thank you so much for listening and thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, AirWave Media has some amazing podcast offerings, check them out. They're at AirWave media.com.

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We're online at B L W podcast.com. I'll link all of the resources I mentioned today in the show notes for this episode. It's also in the description right below where you're listening, or you can go online to blw podcast.com/three 11. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Okay, you are a loyal listener, I can tell because you're still listening at the end of this episode here, or maybe you're just too far away from your phone to change it to the next episode. But I wanted to ask you for a real quick favor. So recently the baby led Weenie Made Easy podcast joined the AirWave Media Network who helps us with our podcast ads management, and every year AirWave conducts a listener survey to help gain more insight into who is listening to which show.

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