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Buying and cooking healthy baby foods

Milupa offer a range of cereals ideal for your babies first tastes. It is recommended that your baby starts the weaning process with a simple food that is quite bland in flavour. Milupa Pure Baby Rice is exactly that. Once your baby is comfortable with the taste and texture of the rice, they can try other cereals in the range which are made from a combination of Follow on milk formula and cereal and are suitable for babies from 4 months up.
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Good health starts at home

Every parent wants to be able to give their baby the very best possible start in life, and in an ideal world we’d all have lots of time in the kitchen to prepare nutritious creations for the whole family.

But even with a busy schedule you can still provide your growing baby with all the good food and variety she needs to help her develop a good, varied palate and the associated skills of chewing and gripping food pieces with her fingers.

Buy high quality foods

In any supermarket you’ll be able to find an array of foods for babies and toddlers. These will come in the form of pre-prepared packs, jars, pots, and finger foods, and they can be real lifesavers.

Make your own baby foods

The advantage of home-made foods is that you know exactly where the ingredients have come from, and you have the opportunity to introduce a range of new flavours to your baby, broadening their palate and getting them used to the taste of home-cooking. This in turn can make your baby more open to trying new tastes later on.

Freezing meals saves time

We all lead busy lives, and it’s not always possible to cook fresh food every day. So consider making larger amounts when you do cook and freezing a few meals to have in reserve when you really need them. You can use small Tupperware plastic containers and ice-cube trays to freeze small portions. Remember to only keep food for your baby in the freezer for up to a month. After that, throw it away.

Beware of sugar, salt and preservatives.

Be careful with the salt levels in the food you make for your baby. Their kidneys aren’t developed enough to deal with any more salt than is found naturally in food, so avoid adding additional salt and heavily salted processed foods such as bacon.

Adding sugar or too many sweet foods will encourage a sweet tooth and put your baby at risk of early tooth decay, so keep this ingredient to an absolute minimum.

Don’t give your baby adult ready meals and convenience foods. They contain preservatives and flavourings that are unhealthy for your baby to digest.

The benefits of organic food

’Organic’ is a term that’s specifically defined by Irish and European law. Organic foodstuffs are those produced by registered growers and are manufactured free from synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilisers. It’s worth noting that descriptions on products, such as natural and environmentally friendly, do not mean they’re organic.

As yet, there’s still no clear evidence that organic food is better nutritionally than ordinary food, but you may feel that organic food is a good choice for your baby, reducing the level of toxins that may pass through his system. Organic baby foods are more widely available and are becoming much easier to find in both supermarkets and health food shops.