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Show ba . By Dr. George Purvis VP-Nutrition Sciences Gerber Products Company Q. How long should my baby stay on baby food? At nine months of age she has a healthy appetite and enjoys the junior foods, but grandmother grand-mother keeps hinting that it's time to start feeding her from the family dinner table. A. Just as there is no absolute ab-solute time to introduce "solid" food, neither is there a cut-off date for discontinuing discon-tinuing baby foods. Much depends on your baby's appetite, ap-petite, teething stage, development devel-opment of motor skills in- volved in self-feeding such as chewing and grasping, your own preference and your family's "normal"diet. The transition from baby foods to table foods should be gradual. Remember that baby foods have no added salt and have a balance of nutrients designed for your growing baby's needs. Table food, whether homemade or prepared convenience food, is usually seasoned to appeal to adult tastes. Basic ingredients ingre-dients and common foods in a family menu, such as cold cuts, cheese, frozen prepared foods and canned foods contain added salt, sugar and preservatives; more seasonings sea-sonings are generally added in recipes and at the table. As a result, introducing baby to the family's favorite foods can mean an abrupt increase in salt and seasonings season-ings in the diet. "Chunky" or "Toddler" foods are one way to bridge the gap between foods prepared pre-pared especially for babies and more conventional family meals. They have controlled amounts of seasoning, sea-soning, texture and taste variety va-riety to appeal to older babies ba-bies and children. Iron-fortified infant cereals should be continued for the first vwo to three years to prevent pre-vent iron-deficiency, a too-common too-common problem of young children. |
