Neighborhood Doctor: Nurturing Healthy Eaters Pediatrician's Guide to Baby's First Foods (Copy)
Join us in this enlightening episode of Neighborhood Doctor as we delve into the world of pediatric nutrition with Dr. Ryan, a dedicated pediatrician and father. Are you a new parent, wondering how to introduce solid foods to your little one while fostering healthy eating habits? Look no further! Dr. Ryan shares his expert insights and advice on this common and sometimes daunting parental challenge.
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Our Host
Dr. Ryan Hassan
Transcript:
Ari O'Donovan: (00:00)
Hi everyone. Ari here. Before the episode starts, I wanna say thank you for listening and invite you to boost Oregon's annual fundraiser. It'll be on November 4th in downtown Portland, Oregon, and there's gonna be drinks, food, live music. It's gonna be a ton of fun. Boost Oregon wants to give fans of the show half price tickets. If you wanna take advantage of that discount, be sure to click the top link in the description and select partner admission. By the way, the second link will also have the event details. So if you're around the great Pacific Northwest, we hope to see you on November 4th, and of course, enjoy this episode.
Dr. Ryan Hassan: (00:02)
I am Ryan, pediatrician and dad here to answer my patient's most common questions. Your baby's ready to start eating solid foods and you want to help them develop healthy eating habits. What do you do? Feeding our children is one of the most common and stressful challenges my patients come to me with in my clinic
Dr. Ryan Hassan: (00:19)
When it comes to feeding kids. There's a few basic ideas. I think every parent should know some hard rules. First, make sure you don't start any foods before four months of age when they're developmentally not ready for it. Make sure you don't give any honey to a child less than one year of age, which could cause botulism, and try to make sure you're not giving a new food more frequently than once every three days in case there's an allergic reaction that you might want to be able to identify. And then while your kids are learning to eat, it's important that you're watching them during meals. One, because it's super fun and awesome, but also because you wanna make sure that they're safe and you wanna make sure any food that could cause choking. Like grapes, nuts, hot dogs are either avoided or cut into small pieces.
Dr. Ryan Hassan: (00:59)
As with all things in child development, our children will tell us when they're ready to eat. If I could sum up my advice for helping kids develop healthy eating habits, generally it would be listen to your child. Let them tell you when they're ready to eat, what they want to eat, how much they want to eat, and when they're done eating. The job of the parent or caregiver is to provide a variety of nutritious, tasty foods and a consistent family mealtime that kids can rely on to be available to them. The job of the child is to decide which of those foods they want to eat, how much they want to eat, and when they want to eat more, or when they want to eat less. So try to make foods fun. Offer foods to your child that you want them to eat, and give them the opportunity just to play with it, smell it, touch it, spit it out if they want to.
Dr. Ryan Hassan: (01:48)
They might take several exposures before they finally decide they want to chew and swallow food. I think it is helpful to focus on, as I said, nutritious foods. So generally things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and home cooked foods and avoid more empty calorie foods, things that are high and saturated, fats and added sugars and low and essential nutrients. These would be things like sweetened drinks or sodas, chips and fries. These are kinds of foods that I say provide more dopamine than nutrition. They are really tasty and they encourage us to eat more, but they make it harder for us to listen to our bodies. So try and avoid them if you can. They're certainly not necessary for nutrition. Now, at the same time, I do think it's important that we don't moralize food. We don't want to make our children feel guilty or feel guilty ourselves for eating or allowing our children to eat, quote unquote unhealthy foods.
Dr. Ryan Hassan: (02:42)
We like these foods because they taste good. It's not our children's fault that they go seeking out food that tastes better. It makes complete sense. So if you don't want them to have a certain food, then don't have it available in the home. It's not fair to have cookies on the table and tell your child that they can't eat them. Don't worry if your child prefers carbs. Most children do. They're a good source of energy and kids need a lot of them. Don't worry if you feel like they're not eating enough. They almost always are. Kids are very good at regulating their own bodies and diets, and don't worry if they're not eating their veggies. A lot of kids don't like veggies as much when they're younger. It doesn't help to tell kids they need to eat certain foods because they're healthy. Just make sure you're providing those nutritious options and making them mealtime fun. If you have more concerns about your child's diet, talk to your doctor or other pediatric caregiver. Otherwise, have fun trying food with your baby. That's my show. If you have any other medical questions you'd like me to answer, reach out to Boost Oregon online and come back next week for a new episode of boosting our Voices with my friend Ari O’Donovan.