How to Build a Balanced Baby-Led Weaning Plate

Skylight Frames (0s):

I will be the first to admit that I was definitely late to the shared Family calendar game for years. I would just keep stuff on the calendar in my phone or the sticky notes or my brain. My husband was on a need to know basis. Then I would get frustrated with him when he couldn't read my mind about all the stuff we needed to work on together to get seven kids. So there are sports and their activities and just get through the day. That all changed when I got a Skylight calendar earlier this year for Mother's Day. So I'd heard of the skylight, but at first I was like, oh, that's not for me. Like we're not a big technology family. My kids do not have tablets or watches. They do not have any way to check the calendar. Then I started realizing how much they were asking me if they could see my phone. Can I see your phone? I wanna see what time my soccer practice is. I have one son, can I see your phone? I need to see what time the Padres play every day when we got the skylight calendar, You guys, total game changer. It's this beautiful 15 inch display. I put it right on the counter in the kitchen so it's right at the kids' eye level. They can reach it. I put the family calendar that was previously only on my phone on the skylight. I color coded every kid. I even sat down recently and manually inputted our paper chore chart. So now every kid checks their chores for the day. They do it, they check it off, they get a star for every tour they do. After a certain number of stars, I've got like a whole reward system set up. The skylight calendar is amazing. It's wifi connected. It syncs seamlessly with your calendar. There are tons of customizable views for daily, weekly, or monthly planning. You can even put in meals, which I recently started doing, so that A, I would actually stay like on a meal plan during the summer when we're kind of off of our schedule. And B, everybody would stop asking me what's for dinner. Right now Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendar if you wanna check it out and organize your family life for yourself. I swear this will change your life too if you go to skylightcal.com/weaning. So again, go to skylightcal.com/weaning to get $30 off your 15 inch calendar. That's S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T-C-A-L.com/weaning and get your calendar game on point now because I know that your brain is also approaching max capacity with that baby. And skylights calendar is pure heaven for connecting your digital and your non-digital world together.

Katie Ferraro (2m 13s):

And if you take that particular meal where you're introducing the new food of the day, which is millet, so you put the millet finger foods in, it's the starchy food. So in the slightly larger, the four ounce portion pocket, the smiley face part of the EZPZ mini mat, and then we do the two familiar foods from previous days. So you've got the rib meat, which you tried yesterday for the first time, and then the zucchini from two days ago. You spend the second half of that meal. So the second 10 minutes is the baby exploring that plate that has the millet, the rib meat, and the zucchini. So in that way you can see your baby is continuing to try one new food a day, but you're also reintroducing the familiar foods from previous days and you're getting it all done in 20 minutes a day.

Katie Ferraro (2m 54s):

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 with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. Hello and welcome back to the Baby-Led Weaning podcast. We're talking about one of my favorite topics today 'cause I am a dorky dietitian and I love the concept of How to Build a Balanced Baby-Led Weaning Plate.

Katie Ferraro (3m 34s):

We are not gonna be talking about portion sizes because there is no such thing as a set portion size of food that your baby quote unquote should be eating. Anytime you see baby-led weaning portion sizes, please know that that is totally fabricated, absolutely made up. I'm gonna show you an idea of what a plate could look like, but there's a lot of nuance here based on how old your baby is, how much experience they have, what your comfort level is regarding the offering of different finger foods. But today you're gonna walk away with some very actionable information on how you can start balancing different foods on your baby's plate when you start solid foods. Every week I put out two new Baby-Led Weaning podcasts.

Katie Ferraro (4m 15s):

I always do a mini solo, baby-led weaning training episode each Monday. And then every Thursday is a longer interview style episode with another feeding expert. Be sure to follow the podcast wherever you're listening to this so that you do get notified when both of the weekly episodes are live. You can find all 500 episodes of the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast online at blwpodcast.com. If you haven't started solid foods yet, you're just diving in to learning about baby-led weaning, welcome. This is a totally judgment free zone. And if you've got no clue how baby-led weaning works, the best place to start to learn is my free online video workshop called Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners.

Katie Ferraro (4m 54s):

You can take this workshop right now, later today, tomorrow when your baby naps, whatever works for you, it's about an hour. It's packed with videos that show you the basics of baby-led weaning, what it looks like, and more importantly, what it should not look like. And everybody on that free training gets a copy of my original 100 First Foods list. So you will never run out of ideas of foods your baby can eat. Next, you can sign up for the workshop at babyledweaning.co/workshop. If you've already got that 100 First Foods list and it's printed out and it's up on your fridge and you're ready to go and then you realize, oh my gosh, I have absolutely no clue how to make these 100 First Foods safe for my baby. Come check out my program.

Katie Ferraro (5m 35s):

That's where all the answers are. Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. I've got 100 First Foods content library in there with, there's over 300 recipes and videos and instructions on how you actually make these foods safe. Plus my 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan, which is literally 20 weeks of meal plans done for you every day. Exactly what food to offer to get your baby to 100 foods before they turn one plus all of the allergenic foods, plus the different trickier textures, 20 weeks of meal plans done for you. Also got a weekend maintenance meal plan in that meal plan as well. So like literally every, it's even more than a hundred days 'cause it's actually like, what's it seven times 20, 140 days. But we call it the 100 First Foods Daily Meal plan for simplicity.

Katie Ferraro (6m 16s):

And that's the key. I literally went and built the program that I wish that I had had when I was starting solid foods with my babies. This is the most comprehensive baby-led weaning program out there. And you can get signed up and start today at babyledweaning.co/program. Now, I like to start each of these mini training episodes with a baby-led weaning tip of the day. Today's tip, you do not have to offer three different foods two to three times a day every day in order for your baby to achieve variety. Okay? Some parents are like, whoa, 100 foods, whoa a food, new food every day. That's like way too much for me. No, it's not. Okay. Over the course of 140 days, your baby is going to learn how to eat 100 foods.

Katie Ferraro (6m 58s):

But it's a very simple formula where we do one new food a day, five days a week. I kind of think of it like your job, like I'm an adult, I have to go to work five days a week. I'm very grateful that I get to come here to work and teach about starting solid foods for you and for families and healthcare providers. But I do it five days a week and just like you know, you've got other jobs. One of your jobs is teaching your baby how to eat. You gotta try a new food every day, five days a week. You do that five days a week, that's 20 new foods a month, and in five short months your baby has eaten 100 foods, okay? But you don't have to do two to three different types of new foods every day, every meal, okay? But hang tight. 'cause In this episode I'm gonna show you what foods can be on your baby's plate, how you can do one new food per day, but also continue to expose your baby to the familiar foods from previous days.

Katie Ferraro (7m 43s):

'cause that's the key here, right? We wanna be moving forward with one new food a day to introduce your baby to new foods and flavors and tastes and textures so you can take advantage of that all important flavor window where your baby will like and accept wide variety of foods, but you also wanna be reintroducing the familiar foods from previous days. So I wanna tell you a quick story was I don't spend a ton of time on social media if I can help it. I love Instagram as a wonderful medium to show parents in really short snippets, the power of baby-led weaning. And I think with baby-led weaning, seeing really is believing you. Family's like, well, my baby can't eat lamb on day four of baby-led weaning. And I'm like, oh, here's all the babies in our program eating lamb safely on day four. Yes, it can be done and here's how you do it. But occasionally, I mean the algorithm knows about baby food.

Katie Ferraro (8m 27s):

So whenever I open up Instagram, I'm trying to get in, get my thing done, get out. But sometimes stuff catches your eye. The other day I saw some mom talking about, and no shame, but like there was a mini mat of food. They said the EZPZ mini mat, which has three little food compartments portions, and she had seven different foods on the mat and her baby was six months old. And she's like, my baby's not eating. And I was like, maybe 'cause you're overwhelming the living. You know what, out of this baby with seven different foods on the plate also, who has time to even prep seven different food? So take it easy and keep in mind that when you start solid foods, your baby is not going to actually eat very much food and that's fine. That's also by design because most of your baby's nutrition will continue to come from infant milk.

Katie Ferraro (9m 10s):

That's breast milk or formula even after you start solid foods. Okay? It's gonna take a solid eight weeks-ish, okay? 40 different foods before your baby kind of gets the hang of picking the food up and effectively chewing it and swallowing it. It doesn't happen overnight, so do not stress out and don't excessively stress your baby out by putting so much food on their plate.

KiwiCo (9m 28s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back. How are you doing with your summer stress level? I know my kids are out of school and while I love these longer days with less structure, they are long days with less structure. Thankfully, this year I've come prepared with my summer sidekick KiwiCo. KiwiCo develops hands-on projects and activities for kids of all ages, and they are my summer savior with the KiwiCo Summer Adventure Series. With the Summer Adventure Series. KiwiCo delivers awesome science and art projects where kids receive six hands-on project kits over six weeks within enriching content and fun activities to accompany each project. So you can stop that summer slide before it even starts with engaging projects like the archery set where kids build their own bow, helping to turn the outdoors into a playground of learning and fun. I know how hard it really can be to keep your kiddos engaged and busy and challenged during these lazy days of summer. And for sure, yes, we should be relaxing. But if you are down for a little summer structure with projects that you'll enjoy working on as much as your kids do, go check out KiwiCo. You can get started building the best summer ever with KiwiCo and get $15 off your summer adventure series at KiwiCo.com/weaning. That's $15 off your summer adventure kit at kiwico.com/weaning.

Katie Ferraro (11m 6s):

All right, so we've already established that you do not need a ton of variety at every meal. Okay? Gradually introducing variety by doing one new food a day is a really effective and surefire way to help your baby achieve diet diversity. Now, maybe you've heard the myth that you need to wait three to five days between foods. That is certainly not true. People who say that, they say, well, you need to observe for any potential allergic reaction, and that's why you ate three to five days between new foods. That's not how it works. It's not like you offer your baby crab shellfish, potentially allergenic food and then three days later they vomit and you're like, oh my gosh, it must be the crab from three days ago. It doesn't work like that. The vast majority of allergic reactions, if your baby is going to have an allergic reaction to food will occur within minutes and up to no more than two hours, the following ingestion, okay?

Katie Ferraro (11m 51s):

Again, starts within minutes and usually within two hours your child's gonna have a reaction if they're gonna have a reaction. And also, no, you do not need to wait three to five days between new foods. It's perfectly safe to offer one or even more than one new food per day. I just recommend against offering two new potentially allergenic foods for the first time at the same time, right? If you did shellfish and peanut at the same time, same meal, your baby's never had any of those food proteins and then they had a reaction, how would you know if it was to the shellfish protein or if it was to the peanut protein? So that's why we do one new allergenic food every Friday. We do it twice on Friday, twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday as part of our meal plan inside of the 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan. Now, when we talk about building a balanced baby-led weaning plate, a lot of parents are like, oh, I thought I would just like put the food on the highchair tray or put it on the table and let the baby pick it up.

Katie Ferraro (12m 34s):

'cause I don't have any plates. Here's the deal. You don't need to buy a lot of stuff when you start solid foods, but there definitely is a benefit to using a suction mat or bowl. And the reason being is that when your baby starts baby-led weaning, they don't have their pinch or grasp, they cannot pick up smaller pieces of food and they can't utilize their forefinger and their thumb to pick foods up. Instead, they're using their whole hand or their Palmer grasp. So if you put the finger foods out on the tray or the table, your baby is going to smash them with their hand, smush it around the table or the highchair tray, and not be able to effectively pick it up. However, if you take that same finger food and you put it in a silicone suction mat that has a pliable silicone barrier, your baby can use their whole hand or their Palmer grasp to rake and scoop that food out and up the side of the pliable silicone and bring that food into their mouth.

Katie Ferraro (13m 22s):

So while sometimes these plates might just like, oh, that's cute, oh, those are adorable. Oh, I like that color, the EZPZ suction mat. So EZPZ is the company that makes the feeding gear that I use for baby-led weaning. All of their products have been designed by a pediatric feeding expert, and there are so many developmental, just tiny little design elements in these mats and bowls that really promote independent feeding. I like the EZPZ mini mat. It looks like a smiley face, and it's the original silicone suction mat. So there's two little eye sockets, so two two ounce portions, and I only tell you that they're two ounces. Just so you get the idea like it's really small because we wanna keep the portion sizes small, but there's no quote unquote set portion size for babies. And then the smile pocket of that suction mat is about four ounces.

Katie Ferraro (14m 5s):

And so what I like to do is I take the silicone suction mat and in each of the eye sockets, so the two two ounce portions, I'll put in one of them a small serving of fruit or vegetable, not both. And in the other eye socket I'll put a small portion of protein, so either plant or animal protein. And then in the four ounce smiley pocket portion of the EZPZ mini mat, I'll put the carbohydrate or the starchy food. And that's because starting at around six months of age, babies start to need a slightly greater percentage of their calories coming from carbohydrate. Yes, they're still getting nutrition from breast milk or formula, and that's great, but as they slowly learn to eat food and start getting more nutrition from food, regardless of how you might feel about carbohydrate containing foods, your baby requires carbohydrates to help fuel their growing body.

Katie Ferraro (14m 52s):

And so we put the starchy, the whole grain food in that slightly larger portion pocket. Now, next I wanna describe how I structure a 20 minute meal. So most babies starting at six months of age can sit in their highchair for somewhere around 20 minutes. I break that 20 minute meal up into two 10 minutes sections for the first 10 minutes, I'll put out the single new food of the day. So I like to use the EZPZ tiny bowl that's a five ounce bowl, or the EZPZ mini bowl, which is an eight ounce bowl. And I'll put a few pieces of the new finger food of the day. So let's say it's the whole grain. We're doing the whole grain millet from the 100 First Foods list. We have these little millet porridge finger foods that we make. Put a few strips of that out in the suction bowl. Give your baby the first 10 minutes of that meal to explore that new food of the day.

Katie Ferraro (15m 36s):

Then in the second 10 minutes of the meal, what I'll do is I'll swap in a mini mat, that's the smiley face with three different compartments. And on that mat I'll have the new food of the day. So the millet finger foods again, and then two familiar foods from previous days. So let's say we did rib meat as the protein earlier in the week, and zucchini as a new vegetable. I'll put a small portion of zucchini, a small portion of the rib meat, and then a small portion of the millet finger food. And for the second 10 minutes of the meal, I'll let the baby explore that meal. They can pick whichever food they want, eat it in whatever order they want, smash it on their face in whatever order they want. The point is, hopefully you're getting the idea here. They're getting one new food a day. That's the millet.

Katie Ferraro (16m 17s):

But continuing to see the familiar foods from previous days IE, the rib meat, and in this case the zucchini.

Ezpz (16m 22s):

If you want to check out some of those EZPZ feeding gear products, the ones again that I use for starting solid foods, the tiny bowl, the mini bowl, and the mini mat got all my favorite EZPZ gear linked up at ezpzfun.com/babyled. And if you use that code, BABYLED, you can get 15% off all of the EZPZ feeding gear. Again, that website is ezpzfun.com/babyled.

Katie Ferraro (16m 47s):

So what are some common pitfalls to avoid when building a balanced baby-led weaning Plate? Don't overwhelm your baby with seven of different foods on the plate. That also would overwhelm you if you had to actually prep all those foods. Don't default to just offering fruits and vegetables. Lots of parents do that. Oh, I'm just gonna, you know, cut up avocado, banana and sweet potato uhuh. You gotta do the protein foods, you've gotta do the starchy whole grain foods. You've gotta do the allergenic foods. So try to follow that five step feeding framework, offering five new foods a week from the five different food categories on the 100 First Foods list. Again, if you wanna grab a copy of that 100 First Foods list, sign up for the free online workshop called Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners at babyledweaning.co/workshop. And if you're ready to get started, making all those 100 First Foods safe for your baby's age and stage following meal plans, recipes, the feeding schedules that I've all got set up for you, it's all inside of the program, Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro, and you can get started at babyledweaning.co/program.

Katie Ferraro (17m 44s):

I'll put the other resources and references from today's episode on the show notes, which you can find at blwpodcast.com/45, and a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave Media. We're online at blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

Fun Facts Daily (18m 14s):

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