WEANING BABY FROM THE BREAST TO SOLID FOOD

The goals of weaning baby to real food is to establish eating habits that will last a lifetime, to develop a solid healthy brain flooded with happy neurotransmitters so that your baby will grow into adulthood with his or her optimal brain development (his or her highest IQ), to bolster and fully develop baby’s immune system, to ensure that baby will grow to his or her genetically set height (and not be a shrimp from eating deficiently), and to set the stage for baby’s endocrine system to develop to prepare for puberty and adulthood.

It seems like a lot of things to think about but all you have to think is a balanced diet of REAL FOOD.

I am not a mother of humans and I’m not a medical professional so please read the disclaimer at the end of this blog. I checked my opinions with a registered nurse who worked for over a decade in pediatrics and pediatric ICU, who is also a mother and a grandmother.

Your very first consideration in our sugar-crazed world is to seriously consider never giving your baby sugar. If your baby doesn’t get sugar in the first 3 years of life he/she will likely never develop a taste for it. Unless you give your baby sugar, he/she isn’t going to be in the kitchen at 3 a.m. making a hot fudge sundae at 8 months old. You are in the driver’s seat when it comes to sugar—at least now. And children’s tastes for food are set in stone by age 3. So it’s up to you.

Another issue if factory food. It’s poison for adults and extreme poison for babies. I may come off as a total lunatic but I’m going to come right out and say my true opinion that feeding babies and children factory food is child abuse. A reasonable person wouldn’t feed say, chocolate to a dog, as chocolate is poison to dogs. So why would you feed McDonalds, Trix, Coke, or any of the other thousands of poisonous substances to your children? When I read “kids menus” in hotels and restaurants I really feel sad. I also feel infuriated. So that is all I’m going to say for now on this subject.

But I do want you to relax. Babies all over the world eat hot curries, insects, and all sorts of weird stuff. If you’re relaxed and casual about feeding your baby a diet of real whole food, he or she is going to accept that diet, and you’ll be setting your baby up for a lifetime of good eating habits (desires).

Food makers were able to put MSG in baby food until 1969 and now the medical community is wondering why there is so many neurological problems in the boomer generation. Even though MSG is not in baby food anymore, don’t feed your baby jarred food. It’s dead.

Just as you would eat yourself, feed your baby historically eaten foods—foods that were consumed 150 years ago.

For baby’s brain, immune, and endocrine development, you want to make sure that your baby eats nothing but real food, and especially real, healthy fats (butter, coconut milk, olive oil, cod liver oil, butter fat from whole milk, whole plain yogurt, eggs, meat, small fish). The brain is 60 percent fat and will be made up of any fats you put into it. So if you feed your baby crackers, then his/her brain will be made up of the hydrogenated or even in the very best case, the damaged vegetable (usually soy) omega 6 oils in those crackers.

Wouldn’t it be neat to make a baby and then develop that baby’s brain on nothing but real, healthy fats? I think it would.

Brain development explodes in the first 3 months of life. It’s crucial for breastfeeding mothers to eat healthy, organic fats during this time so that baby’s brain gets the fats it needs for development.

Raw whole milk (that is milk that isn’t pasteurized) contains abundant omega 3 fatty acids, which is going to contribute to a healthy, happy, optimal brain. Butterfat is also the richest known source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which fights toxins, and regulates metabolic rate. (Unenlightened doctors will flip out at the idea of mother’s or infants drinking raw milk. Of course you should only buy raw milk from a reputable raw milk producer. They are all highly regulated by the government and their milk has fewer bacteria raw than commercial milk has pasteurized).

Never ever give your baby any type of soy. A bottle of soy formula has the same amount of estrogen as a birth control pill. Soy has many problems that you’ll read about in Death by Supermarket and Survival Guide. Suffice it to say here, that it is extremely toxic to babies causing everything from cognitive problems to reproductive problems (public hair and breasts on 2 year old babies, for example).

It’s a good idea to wait until your baby is 6 months old before giving her or solid food as well as her usual milk. After 6 months breast-milk on its own doesn’t give your baby everything she/he needs, in particular iron.

Start with simple puréed or well-mashed foods. Give baby a balanced diet of real, whole food and a variety from the four main food groups:

Proteins
Fats
Nonstarchy vegetables
Carbohydrate

Baby’s shouldn’t eat commercial grain products because they are made with GMO grains. Instead make your own baby cereal, using short grain brown rice, amaranth, grits, millet, maize, or steel cut oatmeal. Put dry grains into a food processor and pulse until powder, then follow this basic recipe:

1/4 cup powder
1 cup water

Bring water to boil in saucepan. Add the powder. Simmer for 10 minutes, whisking constantly. Allow to cool before mixing in breast milk. You never want to heat breast milk as it destroys the enzymes.

With cereal, try offering baby 1 or 2 spoonfuls of the following:

Mashed or puréed vegetables, such as cooked carrot, parsnip, potato or sweet potato, with organic butter for brain, immune and endocrine development.

Mashed or puréed fruit, such as banana, cooked apple, pear or mango. Easy on the fruit as it will develop your baby’s taste for sugar. Always mix with veggies. Just think, if ripe banana is your baby’s first food then SUGAR is going to be the first food he/she tastes.

You can offer food to your baby before or after a milk feed, or in the middle of a feed if this works better.

It may take your baby a while to get used to these new flavors. Don’t be surprised if she/he rejects the food or spits it out. Just try again later, or the next day. You can make the food a little blander by mixing it with a few teaspoons of your milk or organic cow or goat milk.

As your baby becomes used to fruits, vegetables and cereal, add a variety of other foods. Then gradually increase the number of times a day that she/he has solids. By the time your baby is about 7 months old, she/he should be eating solids 3 times a day. A typical day’s intake could include:

Breastmilk

Cereal.

Vegetables: potatoes, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potato, spinach and butternut squash.

Small amounts of pureed grass fed, organically raised meat, poultry, fish, whole plain yogurt, hard boiled egg, well-cooked lentils, and organic cheese.

Don’t give your baby brie, stilton and other mold-ripened or soft cheeses.

Fruit

Use a tiny pinch of sea salt in cooking for natural minerals.

At about 7 to 9 months, most babies are ready for finger foods cut into bite-sized bits. Ideal finger foods for this stage are:

Tender cooked carrots and sweet potatoes
Ripe bananas
Melon
Apples
For teething you can make your own teething biscuits.

1 cup steel cut oats pulsed to coarse oat flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon or ginger or cardamom
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 overripe bananas, mashed
2 organic egg yokes
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbs butter or coconut oil

Mix dry ingredients, add bananas, eggs, vanilla and melted butter or melted coconut oil. Drop by the spoonful onto a baking sheet greased with coconut oil. Bake 12 to 15 min at 350

To avoid brain damage, never give your baby city water or commercial juices as they are made with city water. City water is contaminated with arsenic, mercury, cadmium, fluoride, lead, aluminum, pharmaceutical compounds, herbicides, fungicides, industrial solvents such as vinyl chloride, dioxin, benzene, acrylamide, and polychlorinated biphenyls.

You should also not give your baby (even home squeezed) fruit juices in a bottle as this can lead to “bottle mouth,” a condition wherein your baby’s incoming teeth rot and can jeopardize his/her adult teeth. If your baby wants to suck on a bottle have him/her get accustomed to drinking distilled water, which is the cleanest water. I am researching water filtration systems for distilling for my book Survival Guide.

Also never give a baby or child rice or nut milks as they are also made with city water. Nut milks are particularly dangerous for children as nuts contain natural toxins (inherent in the plants to keep predators from destroying the entire plant).

Keep all toxins (especially chewable plastic and vinyl toys) away from your baby. Use organic detergents and soaps. Use your head. If it’s got chemical gobbledygook words in the ingredients, it’s poison to your baby’s brain. Keep your cell phone away from your baby’s head. Get rid of that stupid microwave!

Enjoy your beautiful baby and watching your baby grow into a healthy child.

Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,

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