Thursday 19 August 2010

Print

How much food and in what proportion should baby eat?


According to my mother's group Ilona’s research, on average each meal baby eats should be around 130 – 150g. This also seems to be about the amount that J is eating. In fact, J sometimes and increasingly eats more than that!

Furthermore, the Danish authorities recommend a "Y" shaped "plate" for every portion, divided into 2/5 consisting of vegetables and fruit; 2/5 consisting of carbohydrates such as rice, bread, potato or pasta; and 1/5 consisting of protein such as meat, fish, egg or cheese.

Here is how I turn the above theoretical advice into practice when feeding J:

For each main meal, I serve J 5 cubes (i.e. ice cube size) of food for each main meal, consisting of:
- 2 cubes of vegetables,
- 2 cubes of carbohydrates and
- 1 cube of protein.

My favourite combination is:
- 1 cube of carrot (orange vegetable) and 1 cube of broccoli (green vegetable);
- 1 cube of potato (root vegetable that provides carbohydrates)
- 1 cube of brown rice or oatmeal (providing another carbohydrates source); and
- 1 cube of chicken OR fish OR red/mung/black beans OR an egg yolk (making up the protein portion).

For the protein portion, this is how I rotate it in a week:
- Day 1 - bean,
- Day 2 - chicken,
- Day 3 - bean,
- Day 4 - cod fish,
- Day 5 - bean,
- Day 6 - egg yolk and
- Day 7 - salmon.

In this way, I achieve the US FDA’s recommendation of eating beans 3 times a week and fish 2 times a week on a regular basis and I will also manage to give J egg yolk once a week. In addtion, i give a little yogurt to J everyday. Thus, in this way, a balance diet for J is achieved without forgetting a single source.

J is an exceptionally good eater, so usually he eats more than 5 cubes of food. So what I do is that I will then go on to serve 2 more cubes of vegetable such as broccoli or move on to serve him a dessert. My favourite dessert for him (and also his favourite) is 1 avocado and 1 banana mixed together.

If your baby doesn't eat as much, reduce the cube size so that you can still keep to the recommended number of cubes per serving.

I serve J 3 main meals a day: breakfast between 7 - 8am, lunch at 11 or 11.30am and dinner at 5 or 5.30pm.

I like to breast-feed J first before serving solids at each main meal, because breast milk is still the best for babies at this age.

However, as J gets older, i.e. 9 months old, milk gradually takes a secondary role. Thus, by that age, I like to serve solids first, and thereafter give him milk.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

My Favourite Books

Montessori Materials