I know several people who do or plan to do BLS, and claim it’s awesome, but I failed to see anything convincing when I researched it myself. I mash up my own carrots and sweet potatoes for my munchkin, mostly because I’m too cheap to buy jarred food, and this is the very first time I’ve heard about a supposed nitrate issue. I usually have veggies anyway, and running them through a food mill doesn’t take much out of my day.

I wish my doctor would have told us to stick to bottled-food, then I could tell her, “The doctor said…” :-p That’s my usual excuse for her when doing anything against her recommendations.

I had eaten only half my baked potato. The other half was on my plate, hadn’t even had butter added to it and I asked her mom if I could smash some of that up for her. Permission granted and I put a teaspoon full on the tray. The kid DIVED in! She was still at the get a fistful and wipe it across the tongue stage, so her great-grandpa thought he would help by picking it up and putting it in her mouth.

She slapped his hand away (which is something all of us had wanted to do for years as he was always stealing food off our plates!) Anyway, we fed her all the potato left along with a few bites from auntie’s plate. Most of it got in the mouth, but she needed a bath afterwards.

After this, baby food was purchased mostly to pack for trips. The only food she won’t eat now is carrots, no matter how they are disguised. Oh, and shell macaroni – apparently it just doesn’t look right to her. At two, she’s eating almost adult-sized portions of just about anything.

Now to gross you out, I’ll tell you how they made baby food in the olden days, which might explain the popularity of jar baby food. Anything on the table that couldn’t be mashed with a fork finely enough for baby to eat, was chewed by the mother, then spooned to the baby.

Really, we’ve come a long way!

As for multivitamins, I think the main worry is Vitamin D for infants. (Maybe that’s a difficult one to get naturally for babies that spend most of their time indoors?) Our doctor recommended a multivitamin liquid solution, but only if she was exclusively on breast milk after 6 months. Since CJ is getting some formula as well as breast milk, and lots of solids, it didn’t seem to be an issue. Basically, it’s the same as adults: if you’ve got a medical condition of some sort, vitamin supplements (like folic acid for pregnant women) are indicated. But if you’re in otherwise normal health and eating regularly, there is no need for them.

This Brit has another question to ask: multivitamins. I get the impression that Yankee kids must have their multivitamins, or they’ll shrivel to dust within hours? (Whereas, when I hear ‘multivitamins’ I think Bad Science, but maybe I’m wrong…?)

But it is advice that is given to everyone. Every infant book I’ve ever read has talked about introducing new foods in this way.

Anyways, I am looking forward to your next post! The only things I know about nitrates are from owning an aquarium and trying to balance nitrate/nitrite levels for the fishies.

Part of the reason our doctor might have recommended this course of action is because both Sally and I have food allergies. I am mildly allergic to many things, none of which are dangerous to me. Sally is badly allergic to shellfish, epi-pen allergic. Perhaps our doctor felt that with allergies in the family, it was safer to feed CJ in this manner.

My next post will be about nitrates, and from what I can tell, that might have been an overly cautious recommendation from our doctor as well.

As for the rise in food allergies, I read a post on another blog recently (hit ctrl+F and type “peanut” to get to the relevant part) that talks briefly about it. She says that peanut allergies are much less common in Israel, where babies are fed lots of peanuts from an early age. I don’t want to seem like I’m claiming some sort of “superior knowledge” to doctors and scientists or anything like that, but I do wonder if over-protectiveness might not having something to do with the increase in allergies.

It seems that when I was a child, all my friends with germophobe moms were always sick with something. Obviously, it could be that the moms super-cleaned everything BECAUSE the kids were getting sick all the time. But it also makes sense that these kids weren’t routinely exposed to germs enough, so their immune systems didn’t get a good work out. So I wonder if this might all tie in to the idea of not feeding kids allergenic foods until quite late, and monitoring the introduction of new foods with an underwear quality inspector’s attention to detail might not be causing more harm than good.

I guess all this is just to say that I believe in a more laid back approach to parenting. I’m speaking as a non-parent, so obviously everything might change when I actually have kids and suddenly discover an overwhelming urge to protect and shield them. But for now, I think that I much prefer the idea of feeding infants whatever the rest of the family is eating (once they are old enough, obviously). Mash it up in a food processor at first, and then just cut into little bits – as appropriate for age. Don’t worry too much about that handful of dirt they just shoved into their mouths.

Again, I’m speaking from a position of complete ignorance – not only about the cause and nature of allergies, but also about the experience of being a parent. Everything I type ought to be taken with a handful of salt.

Much of this advice might be due to the rise in food allergies, for which no one seems to have an explanation. We have backed off of this a bit, and have just been feeding anything that is in her eating stage. If we see an allergic reaction, then we’ll back off the unknown ingredients in that particular meal. So far, we’ve had no problems.

I’m also a little iffy on the one-ingredient-at-a-time advice. I wonder why we can’t just feed our kids until (if) an allergy has been found, and then do some experimenting to find the culprit. Is there any reason why we wouldn’t do it this way?