26 October, 2010

Baby food note

Cooking baby food is enjoyable!

Cook the food, let it cool a bit, toss it into blender and puree away.

Lets read some useful info taken from wholesomebabyfood.com and homemade-baby-food-recipes.com

1. Four basic cooking methods -
  • steaming
  • boiling
  • baking
  • microwaving

These are then followed by pureeing or mashing, depending on the type of food and your baby's age.

2. Steaming is the best way of retaining the foods' nutrients. Steaming as a cooking method helps foods retain their levels of water soluble vitamins too. Vitamin C is an important water soluble vitamin that helps aid in the absorption of iron. Steaming allows the foods to be surrounded by steam rather than soaked in water.

3. If you choose to boil the food instead, then use very little water and keep any water remaining once the food has cooked. You can then use it to thin purees - that way, if any nutrients were lost into the water in the boiling process, you can incorporate them back into your baby's food.

4. The longer any type of food is exposed to high temperatures and immersed in water, the higher the nutrient loss.

5. You can freeze foods containing breast milk, but you should never freeze any foods containing previously frozen breast milk, as this may be hazardous for your baby

6. Refrigerate freshly cooked baby food within 2 hours. Bacteria can grow at room temperature after this time. If the room temperature is above 90 F, refrigerate perishable foods within one hour

7. Some say that immediately transferring HOT foods to the freezer is NOT good because that hot food will affect the temperature of the foods around it and quite possibly the temperature of the whole freezer.

8. It is recommend transferring the food you have cooked to the fridge and then to package for freezer storage within 2-3 hours.

9. Salt and sugar are never needed when making baby food. Omit these items, preferably at ALL times, in your baby's meals. Other spices such as cinnamon, garlic powder, pepper etc. may be introduced as early as 7 months (some said 8 months and above)

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