Zinc: How to Get Enough Zinc with Baby-Led Weaning Foods

Katie Ferraro (0s):

So in the developed world, zinc deficiency, certainly not as common as iron deficiency in infancy, but we can learn from other parts of the world where there's no animal foods in the diet. And there's not a variety that inadequate zinc leads to growth, stunting and poor cognition. So we want to be focusing on zinc foods for babies. 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.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

Hey guys, welcome back today. We're talking about the micronutrient zinc. So zinc is an element or a mineral that you don't hear as much about in baby led weaning as you do iron iron. As we probably by now all know is incredibly important for babies to start getting from the weaning foods that they're having in addition to breast milk or formula at around the six month mark, but zinc is kind of like iron's lesser known little sibling yet still incredibly important. So in this episode, we're going to talk about zinc and how to get enough zinc with baby led weaning foods. Now, when I do these mini baby led weaning training episodes, like the nutrition ones, such as today's about zinc, I like to start out with a baby led weaning tip of the day.

Katie Ferraro (1m 31s):

And today's tip is if your family eats animal foods include those to the greatest extent possible along with other foods, of course, as you're starting solids with your baby, because animal foods are going to be your best bet for zinc. They not only have the most amount of zinc per serving, but it's also the type of zinc. That's very well absorbed by the baby's body. So if your family eats animal foods, try to incorporate those into your baby's diet. As soon as you get started with solid foods at, or around the six month mark and hang tight, because in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing some easy animal foods that are good sources of zinc that babies can safely eat.

Katie Ferraro (2m 12s):

So let's get started looking at zinc and how to be sure our babies are getting enough zinc with baby led weaning foods. So let's start out with what is zinc. As I mentioned, it's a mineral, but it's also an essential mineral meaning that our body can't produce the amount of zinc that it needs for our bodies to function properly. So we need to be getting zinc in the diet and our bodies don't store significant amounts of zinc. So additionally, we need to make sure we're getting it routinely from the diet. It's not like you give a dose of zinc and then you can kind of sit back and relax for a few weeks or months. You need to be eating these foods regularly. Now, zinc again, only very small amounts in the body. It's actually called a micronutrient.

Katie Ferraro (2m 53s):

And sometimes I think people at teachers in college nutrition, a lot of times my students will say, well, the macronutrients are more important than the, just because the micronutrients are required in smaller amounts, doesn't make them any less important than the macro nutrients. But with zinc, there's only a very small amount in the body, but it's so important. It's present in every single organ in every single tissue. It acts as what we call a co-factor for 300 other enzymes, basically there's like 300 other enzymes that can't do their job if zinc isn't in the mix. So among the many things that zinc does, it helps protect your body's cells against oxidative damage. It makes up part of yourself, genetic material.

Katie Ferraro (3m 34s):

It makes up the heme part of the hemoglobin. It's responsible for growth and development and wound healing, behavior, learning, and mood. It also supports normal growth and development during pregnancy. So when you were pregnant, you took a prenatal vitamin. Yes, we were focusing on the iron and the folic acid in that prenatal, but there's also zinc in there because pregnant women, especially pregnant vegetarian women can be at increased risk of zinc deficiency, but we require zinc for a whole host of bodily functions and normal health and development. It also plays a role in your normal sense of smell and taste. So with all of the micronutrients, it's important to know what happens if you don't get enough and what happens.

Katie Ferraro (4m 15s):

And if you get too much and when it comes to zinc deficiency, zinc deficiency was first observed more than 50 years ago, looking at boys in the middle east who are not growing and developing properly. And their traditional diets were low in animal protein and high in foods like whole grains and beans. And those diets were low in zinc and high in fiber and phytates. So phytates are these compounds in certain foods like whole grains and beans, which, you know, those have lots of nutrition benefits, but with low variety of foods and high intake of phytates, basically those compounds bind up zinc and iron. And so even though the foods might have zinc and iron in them, there's lots of phytates kind of inhibits the body's ability to break those down and absorb them.

Katie Ferraro (4m 58s):

So in the populations that were being studied and particularly in Egypt, the bread was unleavened. So with 11 bread, yeast breaks down the phytates as the bread rises well, you're just eating unleavened bread and whole grains and beans and not alone animal foods. There's actually in every nutrition textbook, a very, very famous picture of two Egyptian 16 year old males. One looks like a full on adult grown male or an average hided teenager that you wouldn't expect to see in the developed world. And the other 16 year old looks like a seven-year-old essentially his growth had been stunted. His sexual reproductive organs were not developing properly.

Katie Ferraro (5m 38s):

All of the growth issues that the child had were linked back to zinc deficiency. So in the developed world, zinc deficiencies are not that common, right? A little bit higher risk among certain groups like pregnant women. As I mentioned, younger children, <inaudible> elderly those with low socioeconomic status who tend to have suboptimal foods in their diets are not a lot of variety. So it's unlikely. But if poor growth is noted in childhood, along with poor appetite, practitioners are advised to explore the possibility of sink deficiency, but it's much more. And in the developing world and in the United States, we have national level data that confirms that most of the pediatric populations and including infancy, they meet their zinc needs.

Katie Ferraro (6m 22s):

We don't have widespread zinc deficiency problems. However, just know that issues can arise. If there's no intake of animal foods now, certainly for vegan and vegetarian families, they have to study how they can integrate priest, zinc intake. They use a lot of fortified foods and cereals having 11 breads and whole grains. But if your family again does eat animal foods, including meats and dairy, it's a good idea to include those because that's where we mostly get zinc from. So let's look a little bit more at the food based sources of zinc. So animal foods, as I mentioned, meat and shellfish and poultry and milk products, those are good sources of zinc, but plants like Legos rooms and whole grains.

Katie Ferraro (7m 3s):

They have zinc. But again, noting that the zinc is not as well absorbed from the plant foods as it is from meat. So most adults in the United States get the good amount of zinc that they need. Vegetarians. The needs may be higher. Again, they may need some enriched foods. They may need to be having leavened breads. They need to have a variety of plant foods. So you're not just becoming reliant on a few foods. When we look at the meat foods, okay, oysters have more zinc per serving than any other food, but red meat and poultry. Those are the foods that are, we're going to be providing the majority of zinc in the American diet, but others in containing foods include things like beans, certain types of seafood.

Katie Ferraro (7m 44s):

So crab and lobster are good samples, nuts, beans, whole grains, dairy products, and then four to five breakfast cereals, which we don't incorporate a lot of those early on in late infancy when we're doing solids. But as you move into toddlerhood, you might become more reliant on ready to eat breakfast cereals. Always just look to see if they're fortified with iron. They're almost certainly fortified with zinc as well. Now how much is think does a baby need a breast milk is going to be providing ample or sufficient zinc about two milligrams a day for the first four to six months of life. So again at that period, baby doesn't need anything except breast milk or formula formula of course will be fortified appropriately to match breast milk, but starting at around the seven month mark, there's another set of recommendations and babies need three milligrams of zinc a day.

Katie Ferraro (8m 35s):

So of course, during baby led weaning, you're continuing to offer breast milk or formula. I always say that provides the majority of your baby's nutrition, but just know that it's not exactly the three milligrams that the baby's going to need. And I always encourage parents. You know, you get bogged down in the numbers. You don't have to start calculating and trying to factor in while we had whole grains this day, the phytates reduced the absorption by X, Y, Z. It's really not that important. Just keep it in the front of your mind that you should be offering a variety of foods. And again, if your family does eat animal foods, in addition to breast milk or formula, that's, what's going to help your baby get the zinc that they need, plus the iron as well.

Katie Ferraro (9m 15s):

So when should you start kind of paying attention to her being concerned about zinc it's much like iron. So with iron, we know that at about six months of life is when the iron stores that baby got from mom start to dissipate. So at the tail end of pregnancy, you transferred a bunch of iron to your baby that it doesn't run out like overnight, but it starts to dissipate at around the six month mark. So we think, okay, we got to introduce iron foods. The same kind of goes for zinc. It's around the six to seven month, mark the needs pop a little bit higher. And so if we're offering the very same foods that contain iron, the meat, the poultry, the animal foods, they also are the ones that tend to have zinc.

Katie Ferraro (9m 55s):

The difference being dairy foods. So milk and dairy foods do not have iron in them, but they would contain zinc. But again, if you're offering a variety of foods, food, animal foods, you're going to hit your zinc needs. You're gonna hit your iron needs. You're going to get all of your others and babies nutrient needs. I keep mentioning animal foods if you're interested. Okay, well, people say, gosh, I thought babies can only eat fruits and vegetables. That's certainly not true in my five step feeding framework. I advocate for introducing one new fruit the next day, a new vegetable, the next day, a new starch, the next day, a new protein, the fifth day of the week, a challenge category food that includes the allergenic foods. And so you can be doing meat on week. One of baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (10m 36s):

If you need more information about how to safely feed your baby meat, I have a few other episodes that you definitely would want to listen to. Episode 19 is called meat. How to prepare meat safely for baby led weaning episode 76 was about sustainable meat choices. So smart selections for starting solids. That was an interview with Diana Rogers. Who's a dietician. Yeah. In sustainability and episode one 17, we talked about game meat. How to offer game meats safely to your baby and all link to all of those, those other episodes on the show notes for this episode, which you can find@blwpodcast.com, Tom slash 1 5, 3. And if you'd like to get a list of the different types of animal foods and zinc containing foods that your baby can eat, I have a free 101st foods list.

Katie Ferraro (11m 24s):

I give that away all of the attendees on my weekly free workshops, that workshop is called baby led weaning for beginners. It's all about how to get your baby to eat 100 foods before turning one, without you having to spoonfeed purees or buy pouches, you can also sign up for this week's workshop times, grab your a hundred first foods list. Start going through those lists of animal foods that does include different types of seafood and meat and poultry and dairy foods. Sometimes parents get confused about that. Wait a minute, milk has zinc in it, but babies aren't supposed to have fluid milk until after age one, but they need more zinc around seven months. How do we do this? I'll explain a little bit about dairy in that training as well. So again, you can sign up for this week's workshop times and grab your a hundred first foods list.

Katie Ferraro (12m 8s):

If you head to blwpodcast.com/153. So the takeaway message was zinc. It comes primarily from animal foods. It's important in late infancy for your child's continued growth and development. It's an essential nutrient meaning. We cannot ignore it. We have to offer the foods that have zinc in it, but that zinc deficiency while possible is not generally a problem in the developed world where we do, unfortunately in many regards eat way too many animal foods. Talk about the benefits of animal foods for iron and zinc for babies. But of course, if you rely on too many animal foods, that's too much saturated, fat, too much cholesterol can be excess calories. It can be problematic and adulthood.

Katie Ferraro (12m 49s):

So the whole point of baby led weaning is to help our babies establish a healthful relationship with food that starts by exposing them to a great variety of foods. Your baby can eat a hundred different foods before he, or she turns one. And if you're working in the 20 different protein foods in my hundred first foods list, you're going to be automatically getting your baby the variety of zinc that they need. So I hope you guys learned a little bit about zinc today. I'll link to some more resources if you'd like to read up and learn more, as well as those other episodes that I talked about, plus my free workshop where you can grab the a hundred first foods list. That's all on the show notes page for this episode at blwpodcast.com/153.

Katie Ferraro (13m 32s):

Thanks so much for listening. Bye now.