BLW at Restaurants: Order or Bring Your Own Food?

Katie Ferraro (31s):

And I know for parents there's that feeling of paralysis at the restaurant. Sometimes you're like, wait, the whole point of doing baby-led weaning was so my baby could enjoy family meals. Me, my friends family here, I don't even know what they can eat, right? Should I have brought my own food? Do I order something specifically for the baby? And if so, what is it? Or do I just order for myself and let the baby eat what I eat? We're gonna go through each scenario so you can survive doing baby led-weaning at a restaurant. 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 confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 21s):

Hey guys, welcome back. In this episode we're gonna be talking about baby-led weaning at restaurants. Do you order your own food? Do you bring your own food? Do you order food for the baby or is it for yourself and then they eat your food? How does it work? Well, the impetus for this episode came from at the end of last year after the holidays, I was visiting my family, my husband's family actually, and one of his cousins has a baby, like 10 months of age. And the mom and I were talking about this. She's like, what do you do at a restaurant? And so we put a poll up on Instagram. So when you're at a restaurant with your baby, what do you do? And then the options were, do you bring your own food for the baby? Do you order food for yourself and then let the baby eat it? Or do you order food specifically for the baby?

Katie Ferraro (2m 2s):

So the mom will like ordering food for the baby. I was like, that's interesting. I didn't realize people did that. I thought you just ordered for yourself. Again. At the end of the day, there's really no wrong way to do this. And anytime we do content on restaurant stuff, people like love it because at the most families, I think at some point are gonna eat out at a restaurant and you'd like to be able to have your baby join you. Back at episode 71, we did a real deep dive into Travel + Restaurants: Taking Your BLW Show on the Road. So if you haven't heard that episode yet, I would definitely recommend go and listen to that. But I did wanna share that there's no wrong way to do restaurants. One of our most watched YouTube videos, and if you're unaware, we have a YouTube baby-led weaning channel. If you just go to YouTube.com/babyledweaning, we're the baby-led weaning a channel there and we did a whole thing taking a baby to a restaurant and just showing some tips, I'll link to that video in the show note just so you can kind of see how we did that.

Katie Ferraro (2m 50s):

But in this particular case, with the poll that we did on Instagram when I was with baby Oliver in Palm Springs, 61% of the respondents said that they offer some of their own food for the baby, 22% bring their own food for the baby, and 17% order food for the baby. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (3m 46s):

So my cousin Liz, she decided, we were at California Pizza Kitchen, you know, pizza high in salt, but she's like, we also sat down and there was like 20 of us at the table, including my seven kids. She's like, this is gonna take forever. So right away she asked the waitress like, hey, can I just get some chicken and can I get some broccoli? In this case, the chicken happened to be chicken breast. It was a little bit on the dry side and the broccoli wasn't cooked all the way. So we were like, this is kind of a fail because the baby really couldn't eat the food that she got. And we ended up kind of just modifying all of the foods that we had ordered that we would give the baby some. So there was like some avocado in my salad and there was some hard boiled egg in someone else's, and then there was some just soft cooked pasta from one of the kids that we gave and kind of like she had brought a plate to the restaurant, which just kind of piled the baby up.

Katie Ferraro (4m 26s):

So I personally think it's actually easier just to order whatever you were going to eat and then find a few things there that the baby can eat. Cause I was also like appalled when they charged her like $9 for like a piece of chicken and broccoli that the baby didn't even eat. And I know a lot of parents bring their own food and so you might, if you're not sure what your baby's gonna eat, bring a couple of foods that you know the baby can eat if you're so interested. But it was funny cause she had said, well Katie, what's the right answer? And I was like, Liz, there is no right answer. Whatever works for you. I've always been inclined to order my own meal and then find something. So for example, if you're doing like a chicken salad, if there's fried chicken, just pick the breading off of the chicken, shred the dark meat of the chicken there and give it to the baby. Okay?

Katie Ferraro (5m 6s):

We don't do leafy greens, raw leafy greens for babies. So kind of steer clear of the salad stuff. And yes, when you go to a restaurant, the sodium content is gonna be a little bit higher than when you eat at home or prepare foods at home. But hopefully, you know, restaurants are just a sometimes meal for you or sometimes occasion for you. And so if your baby has a little bit of salt at a restaurant, it's not the end of the world. The other one I always get from parents is like, is it okay if my baby eats a french fry at the restaurant? Now, technically, could you order unsalted french fries for your baby? Sure, in real life are you gonna do that? Probably not cause they taste terrible. But has a baby ever died from eating a french fry at a restaurant? Like unlikely? Okay, a little bit of french fries here and there. Not the end of the world. The most important part is your baby is participating in a meal with you and the rest of the family.

Katie Ferraro (5m 49s):

One area where you do struggle at restaurants is certainly with the footrest. We talk about that often on the podcast, is that highchairs at restaurants are not gonna have footrest. And so sometimes bringing your own portable highchair that you then affix to the adult chair where the baby eats is one thing you can do to kind of rectify that situation. So just a quick reminder that there's no wrong way to do restaurant stuff. I'd love to see you guys eating with your babies at Restaurants. If you're on Instagram, tag me @babyledweanteam. I'll drop some more restaurant references and resources for you in the show notes page for this episode, which you can find at BLWpodcast.com/303.

Katie Ferraro (6m 29s):

A special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media, who put a lot of great podcasts out that feature things like food and science and using your brain. We're on AirWave media and very grateful to be there. We're also online at BLW podcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.