BLW Grocery Haul: Go Grocery Shopping with Katie Ferraro

Katie Ferraro (1m 2s):

I know some of you do not love going to the grocery store, but I want to make it easier for you. So inside of this episode, I'm also going to give away two, $250. BLW Grocery shopping sprees with me, where I'm also going to do a virtual consultation, review your foods and show you how to make them safe for baby-led weaning. 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, leading you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 43s):

Hey guys, welcome back today. We're talking about grocery shopping for baby-led weaning, and I don't know where you fall on the whole continuum of like, do you like grocery shopping or do you hate it? Right? Some people love it. Some people hate it. I was saw something on social media the other day, like this kind of trumped up like mom controversy is going to the grocery store by yourself, really self care. And I was like, dude, self-care is whatever you want it to be. Some people actually like going to the grocery store personally, I have seven small children. So going to the grocery store with them is an actual, like absolute nightmare. And if I want to go to the grocery store by myself, it means I need to usually get two babysitters because my husband works a lot. So I don't love the grocery store. And I actually order a lot of groceries online, like the same stuff if we're doing it over and over.

Katie Ferraro (2m 25s):

But anytime I start working with a new baby for Instagram and baby LED WEANING, I love to go to the grocery store in person. So we actually have a new baby that we're working with this month. I'll be having a lot of that content coming out. It'll be on YouTube and on Instagram, a lot of the videos of the baby's first 10 days. So I've been spending a ton of time in the grocery store this week. And so I wanted to do a baby led weaning grocery haul episode. And actually it's kind of a tie in to a brand new giveaway that we're doing. So it's called Go Grocery Shopping with Katie Ferraro. So hang tight in this episode, I'm actually going to give you a few of you, a chance to win a baby-led weaning, grocery shopping spree, but here's the kicker I'm actually going to go to the store with you.

Katie Ferraro (3m 5s):

Well, virtually that is I have this really exciting giveaway tucked inside of this episode that I want you to win. So be sure to listen till the end. Now, I always like to start out these mini baby led weaning solo training episodes that I do with a baby led weaning tip of the day. And I couldn't pick one for grocery shopping. So I picked three. Okay. I've got three ES related tips, sodium sugar, and the size of foods. When you're going to the grocery store, looking for foods for baby-led weaning, let's start with sodium. Okay. My general rule of thumb is that we want to look for foods that have less than 100 milligrams of sodium per serving. If it's a packaged food you're going to offer to your baby. Now there's two caveats there, right?

Katie Ferraro (3m 45s):

Most of the foods that we offer to our babies don't come out of packages like when you're doing baby led weaning or making a lot of this stuff at home. So like you don't really have to worry about sodium because like the natural foods wouldn't have added sodium. So sometimes if you do rely on some packaged foods, then just check the sodium and look for as minimal amount of sodium as you can, because we don't want to offer too much salt to babies. We don't want them to get in the habit of tasting the salt instead of the flavors of the food. Another mention there with the sodium is that the sodium posted on a nutrition facts panel is actually for an adult serving size. And of course your baby's not going to eat an adult serving size eight smaller than that. So again, don't freak out about the sodium, but it's just something to pay attention to. My second tip has to do with sugar. We really want to look for zero grams of added sugar in any of the foods that we're selecting for our baby.

Katie Ferraro (4m 29s):

Now, sugars can be naturally occurring or added. We love the naturally occurring sugars, right? Those are found in foods like carbohydrate or starchy foods. They're found in fruits. They're found to a lesser degree in vegetables and then certain types of dairy products would still have a little bit of carbohydrate. Those are the naturally occurring milk sugars, and those are fine. It's the added sugars. Okay. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero grams, no added sugars for babies until within the first two years of life. So if you're reading your labels, flip it over, take a peak, zero grams of added sugar is what we want to see. And then the third tip is with regards to the size of the foods. Okay, we're going to kind of take a tour around the grocery store in today's episode, but when you're picking out foods, especially for produce, and especially if you're starting early on in baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (5m 12s):

So I am my programs. I have phase one of baby-led weaning, which is the first eight weeks of baby led weaning. We really want to focus on pieces of food about the size of your adult pinky finger. So when you're visualizing the foods at the store, be like, is this going to be easy for me to cut down into a strip about the size of my adult pinky finger? And if the answer is, yes, that's the food that I go with, especially for phase one. And if the answer is no, it's a food that I'll hold on and do later in phase two. So once your baby has been doing solid foods for about eight weeks, they're generally pretty comfortable with lots of different textures. They've gotten very proficient at moving foods around the mouth. They're starting to learn how to chew. They're actually swallowing some of the foods that you're offering them, and then they have their pincer grasp. It may be safe to move to the smaller pieces of food.

Katie Ferraro (5m 54s):

So sodium sugar and size of foods is what you want to keep an eye out when you hit the grocery store. Now I do have some other grocery store resources for you. If you are just new to the podcast, hello, welcome. This is episode 245. So I get it. Some people are like, I love your podcast, but it's also incredibly overwhelming because you have a lot of episodes. I do have a lot of episodes, but we've covered a lot of grocery store specific stuff. So I just want to call out a couple of other episodes if you're like getting ready to start. And you're like, Ooh, I need some grocery shopping tips. Episode one 11. I did a whole grocery shopping for BLW. This was a stocking up smart and what to skip. So it kind of, I like to always focus on all the foods your baby can eat.

Katie Ferraro (6m 35s):

Okay. Because there are so many foods Babies can eat and I do not like it when other big baby-led weaning outlets talk about all the things you can't do. But in that episode, I did mention some foods that you would want to skip in the grocery store just because they're not the best bets for babies. So that's episode one 11. And then also if you're stocking up episode 91 was a great one. All about pantry planning. So is pantry planning for baby-led weaning and kind of like looking through your pantry and what you already have on hand. You might be surprised how many foods you already have at home that your baby can safely eat. And I have a free download in that episode. If you go to the show notes, BLW podcast.com/91, you can get my pantry planner. It's a free feeding guide that kind of has some lists of the different parts of your pantry, where there's foods in there that your baby can safely eat.

Katie Ferraro (7m 17s):

Or if you're going to stock up, take that to the grocery store and be like, I need this and this and this. Oops. I already have that. That's at BLW podcast.com/ 91. And then when you're actually in the grocery store, I did a whole episode on the freezer aisle. So freezer, aisle fines for baby led weaning that's episode 89. If you've got some freezer space, I know a lot of you guys buy like deep freezes. For example, if you're pumping or breast milk and you needed extra place to store it, you might be kind of weaning off of breast milk or not have as much as you used to. You might have some extra space in that freezer if you do. There's a lot of great foods from the frozen aisle that work well for baby led weaning and episode 75 was also all about canned foods. There are so many great, affordable, safe, nutritious foods that come from cans that babies can learn to eat and did a whole episode on canned foods that's episode 75.

Katie Ferraro (8m 0s):

So in this episode, and we'll talk a little bit about grocery shopping basics, and then share a bit more about this giveaway that we're doing. So if you are kind of planning your baby LED WEANING approach, a lot of you might be doing my hundred FIRST FOODS approach. So back in 2016, I created the a hundred FIRST FOODS approach to baby LED WEANING, where we get your baby to eat a hundred foods before they turn one. And so the way when you're using this, I have a free a hundred FIRST FOODS list. When you're using the list to kind of map out the five foods each week, your baby will eat. There are five food categories on the hundred FIRST FOODS list. There's fruits, there's vegetables, there's starchy foods, there's protein. And then there's an allergenic foods category. So we pick one food from each of those five new foods a week.

Katie Ferraro (8m 43s):

Yes, it's perfectly safe to introduce one new food a day. You do not need to wait three to five days between trying new foods. If you are hearing who you go to work three to five days between trying new foods, please make sure you go and listen to episode 84. I did a great interview with Carina Venter. She's a PhD dietitian who does a lot of the research on diet diversity. And we're talking all about why you don't need to wait three to five days between new foods. That's in episode 84. So if you're using my five-step feeding framework to choose the five foods each week from the a hundred FIRST FOODS list, we offer one food from each of the five categories. And we do that five days a week. So what a lot of families do is they'll plan.

Katie Ferraro (9m 23s):

Okay, for the next week, here are the five foods circle, one from each of the different categories. Those are the five foods I'm going to offer my baby. Now you have to actually have the foods in order to offer the foods and people. I feel like what I originally did, the a hundred FIRST FOODS program I did with my quadruplets first in 2016, and then my twins in 2018. Then I turned it into a digital program and we've now helped tens of thousands of families around the world. Do this approach. People will be like, why did you pick this food before that food? And for the vast majority of the foods, there's really, really no rhyme or reason you do not have to do any foods in any particular order. And so I make a point, especially on Instagram and YouTube of showing how you can take any food from the a hundred FIRST FOODS list. And we could pick 10 of those and make them work for the first 10 days of baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (10m 4s):

This all works for age six months. Plus when the baby is showing the other signs of readiness to eat, and you can make all of these foods safe for your baby. And a lot of types of foods that I picked was just because like, that's what I had in my freezer. That's what I had on hand. And I'm like, my goal in life is really not to go to the grocery store, but then you get to a point where, okay, a hundred foods you've got to have to eventually go to the store. So those are some of the tips I'm sharing today. If you want to grab the a hundred FIRST FOODS list, I give it away to everybody on my free online workshop called BABY LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS, you can sign up for this week's workshop times. If you go to baby led weaning.com, that is a one hour video workshops. So I show you lots of visuals of how to make the foods and babies eating in the first few days, just so you can get idea of what it looks like.

Katie Ferraro (10m 46s):

I know we're on the podcast and a lot of you are like auditory learners and you like to listen to stuff me too, but you really got to see some of this in person. So that video training baby led weaning.com. You can get signed up for the one hour free online workshop called BABY-LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS and get your copy of the 100 FIRST FOODS list. So you can put some of this into practice. So back to the grocery store, if you're picking your five foods, what a lot of families will do is like, especially the whole grains, not every grocery store is going to happen. It depends where you shop. Okay? And so a lot of times they'll kind of order the whole grains online. I love Bob's red mill. This is not sponsored at all that. I just go to Amazon, go to the Bob's Red Mill store, click all the whole grains that we're going to do. There's 20 different starchy foods on the 100 FIRST FOODS list and kind of just order them to have on hand.

Katie Ferraro (11m 28s):

Cause those are ones you tend to not be able to find in the grocery store, but the fruits and the vegetable category, the protein and the allergenic foods, I generally will get them from the regular grocery store. So when you're in the produce, aisle, fruits and vegetables, okay, we're looking, especially in phase one, those first eight weeks for fruits and vegetables that we can make soft and make them in strips or sticks about the size of your adult pinky finger. So foods that don't work great early on in BABY-LED WEANING. I do blueberries really early. I do not do strawberries super early. I'm looking for longer pieces of food like melons and avocados bananas. I love squash, zucchini. Those, you know, the bigger pieces that again, once you cook them, you can cut them when they're nice and soft into strips about the size of your adult pinky finger.

Katie Ferraro (12m 13s):

So if you guys are looking at the 100 FIRST FOODS list, just circle, especially for the first few weeks, the ones that are easier to put into strips, okay? Cause your baby at six and seven, even eight months of age is not going to have their pincer grasp. So they can't pick up the smaller pieces of food, like a blueberry. And we don't do cherry tomatoes or grapes very early on in solid food feeding because you need to cut the cherry tomatoes into quarters or cut the grapes into quarters and your baby can't pick those up with their pincer grasp. So for the produce aisle stick to the longer pieces. Okay. Now let's talk a little bit about the proteins. If your family eats animal foods, I love to see you offering meat in week. One of baby-led weaning got a ton of meat related content here on the podcast, but don't be shy about talking to your butcher or whoever's at the meat counter.

Katie Ferraro (12m 55s):

And what we're looking for with meats are fatty cuts of meat. Okay? We don't want extra lean where it's just protein. Okay. A little bit of protein is fine, but babies need fat to lubricate that protein and make it safer for them to swallow. So what's good about the fatty cuts of meat is they tend to be more affordable. Okay. So we're going to look for that a little bit on the cheap side, which is nice to save some money, but there might be cuts of meat that you're not familiar with. So if you need help ask someone at the meat counter, if you can't, but check out some of the other episodes on the podcast about meat, for ideas on the specific cuts. And we did this really cool episode. I'm not sure if you guys listened to it, but it was with Cara Nicoletti. She's a fourth generation butcher she's out of the Brooklyn area and New York, but she walked us through the meat counter with a whole bunch of tips on different cuts of meat.

Katie Ferraro (13m 44s):

So that's episode number 176. It was called BLW at the butcher identifying ideal cuts of meat for babies with fourth generation butcher, Cara Nicoletti. Again, that's episode 176. And I know I'm throwing like a lot of other episodes at you in this one. So I'm going to link them all up on the show notes. For this episode, you guys go to BLW podcast.com/245. I'll have all these other grocery related episodes for you. You'll be like, oh my gosh, I never knew so much about the grocery store. So the meat counter looking for fatty cuts of meat on the protein list in the a 100 FIRST FOODS list, there's also a lot of plant based protein. And so that plant based protein we want to be offering, there's a lot of different beans. And there's a lot of tips in that canned food episode for choosing the plant foods, or you can buy the beans and soak them yourself.

Katie Ferraro (14m 27s):

If you prefer. And then a couple of tips for the allergenic foods trying to do one allergenic food a week from week. One of baby led weaning is really, really important. We want you to get those allergenic foods in early and often, and sometimes they can be challenging. So if you're not sure where to start, my suggestion is always peanut milk and egg are three of the big nine allergenic foods. And those are the nine foods that account for about 90% of food allergy, peanut egg and milk are the ones for which we have the best data to support early introduction. It appears that we really want to introduce those early because they have the potential to reduce the risk of peanut allergy, egg allergy and milk allergy respectively. So if you're not sure where to start, start with peanut egg and milk. And if your baby has been having formula, your baby has already been exposed to cow's milk proteins.

Katie Ferraro (15m 9s):

So you can kind of skip that one or pick a different allergenic food or do that one just in a different form, a low sodium cheese like ricotta, or you can do homemade cottage cheese. I shared that recipe a lot. You make it from whole milk. There's lots of ways to continue to introduce cows milk protein, but it's not as important if your baby has already had formula. If your baby's exclusively breastfed, then you definitely want to focus on cow's milk protein early, along with egg and along with peanut. Okay? So now for the special giveaway, if you want to go grocery shopping with me, we are going to select two winners for this particular giveaway. And here's the way it works. There's a prize package that two winners who are randomly selected will receive, which is a gift card for $250 worth of groceries and a 15 minute virtual consultation with me reviewing your grocery cart.

Katie Ferraro (15m 57s):

Okay. And this is just to like give you some tips and we can do this virtually. So you, before you purchase it. So a lot of you might be ordering your groceries online sometimes again, I don't want you to ever think that doing baby led weaning is expensive. It does not need to be expensive, but some of the foods on the 100 FIRST FOODS list might not be foods that you regularly purchase. So you might have to do like a special purchase online and I'll kind of help you walk through why I choose this one over that one. We'll look at some food labels together. We'll do some cost comparison. So here's how you enter the giveaway. Two lucky winners will receive $250 of groceries and a 15 minute virtual consultation with me reviewing that grocery cart. All you got to do to enter is leave a review of the baby led weaning made easy podcast on apple podcasts and inside of your review.

Katie Ferraro (16m 39s):

If you could please just drop one idea for a future episode, I get my best episode ideas from your reviews. You guys have the best ideas, and I want to be able to answer the questions and provide the content that you are interested in. One other thing, when you're leaving your review, just make sure your Instagram handle is in the review so that if you win, I can contact you that way. If you've already left a review in the past, you can actually update your old review with anything new you'd like to see, okay. The giveaway opens on July 11th, that giveaway closes on July 15th, 2022. So head to apple podcast, leave a review for the baby led weaning made easy podcast and hopefully you'll win. And I can give you $250 a baby led weaning groceries, and we can go grocery shopping together.

Katie Ferraro (17m 23s):

So good luck to everybody in the giveaway. All of the links from this episode are lined up for you at BLW podcast.com/245. And I also wanted to mention that if you're more of like a reader, I've got some great top 10 list articles that I've done on my blog about grocery shopping. So I did 10 foods. So 10 Walmart foods to buy for baby led weaning. If you shop there, I moved to a town where the best grocery store is a Walmart and I used to not know anything about Walmart, grocery shopping. It's like the best thing in the world. I went through tons of foods at Walmart and picked out my 10 favorite for baby-led weaning. So I have an article on that. I have another one on 10 whole foods, foods to buy for baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (18m 4s):

I've got tens sprouts farmer's market foods to buy for baby-led weaning. I did 10 Costco foods for baby led, meaning and 10 trader Joe's foods for baby-led weaning. So those are five articles. If you head to my blog, it's fortified fam F a m.com. So F O R T I F I E D F A M.com fortifiedfam.com and just type in any of those grocery store names, Walmart, Costco, Trader Joe's, Sprouts, or Whole Foods. And then you can find those articles with lots of other grocery store tips. So I hope you have enough grocery store content to get started with baby-led weaning for your baby and to not run out of ideas of new foods. And again, if you want to grab that a 100 FIRST FOODS list, the workshop is baby led, weaning.co, and the giveaway for the grocery store hall with me ends on July 15th.

Katie Ferraro (18m 51s):

Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you guys next time.