How to establish healthy eating habits from the start

Breast milk is the best food for your baby. Commercial formula is the next best choice. As early as the first week, you will be setting your baby off on the path to good habits by allowing him/her to feed on demand. Whether breastfeeding or bottle-feeding, listen to the cues your baby provides around hunger and fullness. Feeling hungry is an inborn trait. Humans, like other mammals, generally eat when hungry and stop when full - at least in the first few years of life. The same holds true when you introduce solids. Let your child guide the process and listen for the cues he or she is giving you around feeding, food likes and dislikes. As difficult as it will be, do your best to let true nourishment guide the process of feeding without the influence of commercial products, so called 'child-friendly' foods that may be full of additives or colourings and are often presented in glossy packaging.

When Starting with Solid Foods…

Begin with iron-fortified, single grain, commercial infant cereals.
Later, add well-mashed, cooked vegetables and fruit, with no added sugar, salt or fat.
Do not offer vegetables with high nitrate levels (beets, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, green beans or spinach) until your baby is 6 months old.

How do I Start?

Wait at least 3 days before giving your baby another food.
Offer 1 new food at a time.

Safety Tips

Honey can cause botulism and is not recommended for infants under 1 year.
Some foods can cause choking, these include: popcorn, seeds, nuts, candies, raw carrots, corn and other hard raw vegetables. Hot dogs and grapes should be sliced lengthwise.
Always stay with your baby while he or she is eating or drinking.

In her book, How to Get your Kid to Eat, But Not Too Much, Ellyn Satter discusses the principles of a normal, healthy feeding relationship from infancy through adolescence. She suggests that as a parent you are responsible for providing healthy food for your children in a form they can easily handle. What your child chooses to eat, and whether or not he or she eats at all, is your child's responsibility. Beginning in infancy, we are all the bosses of our own bodies and our internal hunger and fullness cues. No one can make us eat if we are not hungry or do not want to eat. Many parents struggle with all kinds of child-feeding problems. Many originate from crossing the line of the feeding relationship.

To enhance your child's interest in eating, consider these strategies:

Involve children in meal preparation.
The sooner kids take an active role in helping make meals, the more readily they accept new foods and the less picky they are. Kids as young as two or three can be involved by scrubbing potatoes, tearing lettuce for a salad, arranging vegetables on a platter, shaping cookies or stirring the pancake batter.

Allow them choice
Allow kids to serve themselves at the table. Starting at about age two, avoid dictating what foods the kids must have. As long as you have provided healthy options, if all they choose to put on their plate is bread, do not worry. The less of an ordeal made, the better. It is quite natural to become resistant when someone else tries to dictate what you should eat.
What are some tips for happy mealtimes?
To help your baby develop healthy food habits and a happy relaxed feeling about eating:

Choose what food to offer, providing a variety of healthy options representing all of the food groups. Introduce as much variety in tastes, textures and food combination as you can in your child's first two years of life.
Let your baby/child decide whether to eat and how much.
Maintain standards of behavior at the table.
Make family mealtimes as comfortable, calm and relaxed as possible.
Offer finger foods and foods with more texture between 6 - 9 months. These allow your baby to develop important feeding skills.
Offer food at regular times.
Remember - messiness is a normal part of learning to eat.
Serve food in age-appropriate ways that your child can handle. At an early age, eating with fingers and hands should be allowed.
Set a reasonably structured pattern of meals and snacks. Most children respond well to structured mealtimes

Recommended Online Resources

How to establish healthy eating habits from the start

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