Food for a 1Yr Old

My daughter never would eat the food out of the jar. I fed her avocados, bananas, bread with olive oil, softer cheeses, pears, apple sauce, cheerios, spinach, scrambled eggs, oranges, etc. I would also mash up or blend whatever veggies we were having for dinner & mix them into rice cereal to get her used to the taste. Good luck!!

There is a good recipe book called First Meals, by Annabel Karmel. The book is arranged by age, and has really yummy combinations. Most of the meals are very easy to prepare, and many can be frozen. I have used this book a lot for my 2 kids and they really like the food! Bookstores like Barnes & Noble, Borders, & Amazon.com carry this book (probably others also).

Hello,
you can try mash potatos mac n cheese and apple suace. Pretty much anything soft can be tried.

K. A.

Hi C.!
My son is 13 months old and we started him on baby food at 6 months. We started out with the baby food and did all the stages with him, we then moved onto the Gerber graduates heated meals at about 9 or10 months we cut out the baby food and he started eating food we were by 11 months . Our doctor told us to just take it slow and small pieces. I think it also depends on your doctor, our neighbors doctor doesn�t want them starting solid foods like chicken until the baby is 12 to 13 months old. Our son was not happy with just formula all the time.
Breakfast is usually a few of the silver dollar pancakes cut up, and some sort of fresh fruit, right now we are on a strawberry and cantaloupe kick. Lunch is a toss up with grilled cheese, leftover dinner, fruit, chicken fingers. Dinner is usually whatever the family is eating. If we are having something a bit spicy I take his portion out and then add the spice. I have found that he loves all sorts of foods and it is much cheaper then the baby foods. He is in no way over weight, falling at the 55th percentile at 12 months old for weight so I figure we are doing something right! The key is to make sure things are diced up fine and cooked well. Meats such as steak or chicken cut to about the size of a pea. We discovered by mistake that he loves the skinless boneless thy meat of chicken, a little easier and tastier then breast I suppose! I try and cook fresh or frozen veggies since the canned food have a lot of salt. But again they are chopped up fine. He loves fruit so I make sure to have a lot of that on hand and now that he has more teeth I am starting to increase the size oh his food so he can bite down better. We also let him feed himself starting at about 11 months old, messy for sure but I think this helped him since he got to control what went in his mouth. So far we have had no choking, a cheaper food bill, and a full belly everyday! I am hoping that giving him a wide range of foods will have him not be such a picky eater! Keeping my fingers crossed! Good luck to you!

C., I have a son who will be one year old next week. We give him all kinds of things, in fact he really dosen;'t take baby food anymore. Oh, and he only has one tooth to date so we don't do anything, but here are some things he eats...

- shredded cheese, or little pieces of velvetta slices
- LOVES little pieces of ham and turkey (from deli)
- kraft mac & cheese or other little pieces of pasta
- bread torn up into pieces
- veggie burgers
- crumbled cooked hamburger or turkey meat
-Canned mixed vegetables (we cut up the potatoe parts)
- LOVEs yogurt
- Pieces of watermelon, banana, strawberries

We pretty much give him whatever we eat just in smaller form..
try stuff, he will tell you if he dosen;t like it. Also, try somthing 4-5 times before you give up, sometimes it can take a while. If you have any more questions, you can e-mail me direct.. ____@____.com
L.

Hi there. My son just turned 13 months. Here are some of the things I feed him. Mainly you want to look for soft foods cut into small pieces.

Avocado (mashed or chunks now that he's older)
Pieces of cheese
Quesadilla - This is a favorite. I use whole wheat tortillas, cheese and add chopped spinach, chard or other vegetable, and sometimes mashed beans.
Beans - Beans are very healthy and easy to feed to infants and toddlers. I mash canned black beans, cannellini and others with some olive oil.
Chunks of soft fruit (banana, kiwi, baked apples tossed with cinnamon)
Small pieces of soft cooked veggies (carrots, acorn and butternut squash, sweet potato, etc.)
Egg yolk and then scrambled egg when he's 1
French toast - This is another favorite. I used ww bread.
Yogurt - This is a great base. You can mix in applesauce, fruit, veggies. I also thin it with a little juice for a very quick smoothie.
Small pieces of turkey and chicken
Veggie burgers
Tofu

Hope this helps!

Hi C., There are some really good suggestions in these responses. I subscribe to Parents magazine and the October issue has an article with a lot of really good ideas for healthy finger foods. Whole wheat pasta, avocado, grilled-cheese sandwiches, cut up, whole grain pancakes, chopped egg (they say 12 months, but we started eggs at 9 months), etc. My twins are 11 months old now and have been finger feeding themselves since 9 months. I still give them some jars, but only as snacks and to round out a meal if I think they haven't gotten enough fruits or veggies. They absolutely hated the jarred meat - yuck!

spagetti, macoroni, small cut chicken, blueberries(frozen works great with teething, yogurt with fruit, bananas, rice, apples- no skin, melon, toast with butter cinnamin and sugar, cottage cheese, saltines, cheerios, grahm crackers, any steamed supersoft vegetable, refried beans with cheese, black beans, corn, oatmeal, pudding, home made french fries, or potato strips, eggs, grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat, french toast, pancakes, mashed potatoes

He can eat anything you can, kitchen sissors work really well to cut pieces the size of a pea. stay away from nuts, and fruit or vegetable peelings

By that age I fed my son crackers and cheerios I think, or maybe he was a little older. They sell all sorts of baby snacks that dissolve quickly so they won't choke in the baby food aisle. Mine had six teeth. It's amazing what they can do with them. My baby also loves to munch on a peice of bread, which is pretty soft. I also would use yogurt and banannas, which he loved. You can also do other peeled fruit if it's soft, according to a paper my doctor gave me. I would recommend this thing that Fry's grocery store carries called The Masher or something like that, and it has a ring handle for the baby to hold onto and a mesh net that you put soft food in. Then you close the net tightly and the baby can chew the food through the net and get all the juices and flavor without the pulp and choking hazard. So I would recommend that at this age. You can put grapes, strawberries, apples, etc, into it without worrying about him choking.

I would also feed him canned fruit and vegetables, because they are very soft, plus they're much cheaper than baby food jars. At first I would mash them for my boy, but as he got better at picking things up and using his teeth, I would just put the peices of canned food on his high chair and he'd pick them up and eat them. Another thing I did was steamed vegetables. Basically whatever I cooked for DH and I for dinner, I would pull out some of the cooked veggies or other soft ingredients, and throw them in my food processor/blender so my baby could have fresh cooked veggies and a variety along with DH and I. Now he can eat the cooked vegetables without me mashing them at all. You can also try cous cous, which is a tiny pasta in little tiny balls, or you can feed him rice. I tried tofu also, but he didn't really like it. And according to my doctor, you can feed them little peices of chicken tenders around a year old. I tried it, but he wasn't really interested, but now he's 14 months and loves little pieces of tender meat and is much better as eating with the few teeth he has. I would just supervise when he's trying new food, especially the stuff that isn't mashed. My son has done fine with all of it.

C.,
Gerber and a few other baby food comapnies make Stages foods, sold in your grocery store. Wal-mart carries a good selection most of the time. They are made so your little one won't chike and have the flavors they should. They make it easier to buy a variety in little peoples portions and finger foods. My daughter who is now 7 loved them as did my now 3 year old Grandson.

Hi C.! I have a 1 year old and have been trying to introduce more table foods as well. My daughter has a hyper-active gag reflex, so this has been challenging. Some foods we've tried that have worked (sometimes after a couple of tries) are Cheerios (that one's pretty obvious), Wheat chex (has 80%RDA of iron and although they don't dissolve as easily as cheerios they break up very easily and she hasn't had any probs with them), goldfish, frozen peas and carrots (just micro wave with a little water for 10-30 sec), yo-baby yogurt, cottage cheese, pancakes with pureed fruit (good source of iron too), grilled cheese, toast, sliced cheese, mac-n-cheese (home made or box-Annie's organic whole wheat is fairly ok), beans and rice....I hope that helps! M. R

My wife was awesome at this. We used to mush up all kinds of stuff to keep Rainey Joy interested in eating. Fresh steamed veggies, meats in a blender, lots of things with yogurt.

Kurt

I feed my 10 month old lots of food. Mashed potatoes, ground turkey, tofu, well cooked veggies, dark meat chicken (it is usually soft enough and can be broken into very small pieces), yogurt, fresh fruit, bread. If they have a desire to self feed, they will chew with their gums. As long as bites are small and food is relatively soft it is ok. She eats many of the foods we eat.

Check with WIC, it isn't just for low income. You can go in and request information on the appropriate foods for your child's age. They also have a parent cooking class, where they discuss foods, and such. You don't have to use their services for the information. They can help you a great deal, and ease your mind.

No question my biggest fear was and still is choking. I have a seven year old (the choking fear is pretty much gone) and 2 year old. With our two year old, we introduced food slowly, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soft crackers, canned pears when we saw enough teeth. But we still make smoothies for her every day, with bananas, baby liquid vitamins, green juice from Trader Joe's, organic baby food and olive oil and flax oil and she seems to really love it. That way she gets her nutrients and we don't worry about choking.

Hope that helps.

Hi there - I totally understand...here are some fun ideas. Mash up banana on your own...it's a different texture from the jarred stuff and kids love it. Veggie Booty (You can find it at Wild Oats or Whole Foods) it's a puffed snack (like a cheese puff consistency but WAY healthier - made with broccoli, kale, cabbage & dissolves in the kiddos mouth...they are good!) Cheerios...canned peaches mashed up...basically any canned fruit or veggie mashed up...Gerber makes fruit puffs that dissolve really well too. Little cubes of extra firm tofu are good too - they break down really well. I hope that helps! :D

C.,

My daughter is the sam eage, 11 months and she eats everyhing but baby food, she ha never liked eating any baby food we have given her. She eats whatever we eat, I may have to cook them a little more to make them osoft but she goes at it. Mashed potatoes, carrots, celery, cucumbers, green beans, chicken, fish, noodles, pears, pudding, jello... you name it. I even feed her our cereal, she wont weat cherrios, but we give her bran flakes, with just a little milk. Does he have teeth? let his gum on a piece of cucumber and see how he does.

my daughter is 9 months and wouldn't eat the baby jar food. so i buy those gerber graduates foods, and she loves those. i just mash it up more and give her. it's sold right there with the baby foods, and they have a bit of a selection. i also divide them up cause she can't eat the whole thing.

My kids loved prety much anything I would give them to eat as long as you chop it up small enough that you know it will go down. Mashed potatoes are great or fries or green beans or pasta or bananas or peaches....etc You can do any of these softer foods ver easily. I would always cut up chicken or beef with a food chopper and then throw it in with their mashed potatoes so that it is even easier to go down. Good Luck!

Dear C. - consider this age a time to train favorite healthy foods for the future...

top buds of cooked broccoli..mine love broccoli for good now

those little gerber carrot juices- my 2 year old considers it a candy treat (100 plus percent vit a and c)
ripe bananas, cottage cheese, refried beans, eggs
Apple sauce with no hfcs...with a bit of supergreen or perfect green powder and cheerios on top.

give a little at first, of course, to check their sweet little tummies reactions. Have fun with your little sugar!

homemade mashed potatoes, Chicken soup (the broth)and the vegetables mashed up,you can even smash up spaghetti.

All of these ofcourse made on a blander scale than when cooking for an adult.

My daughter loved black beans. I would give them to her straight from the can, though you could mash them a little with a fork if you were worried. They make a great finger food. I loved the book Super Baby Food. It is a tad militant and I didn't do all of the things, but it offers lots of ideas.

I hope this helped.

They love finger foods. Anything bright and colorful works.

There's an excellent book called Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. It's huge and has tons of helpful info including how to make your own baby food. Good luck! V.

I recommend going to a La Leche League meeting or contacting a local LLL leader (www.lalecheleague.org and click on groups/affiliates to find meeting times or leader names and numbers). I go to every meeting, and most meetings are on food. You don't have to worry if you are not breastfeeding him anymore. LLL helps mothers who are not breastfeeding as well. I also recommend feeding him whole real foods from your table using a food grinder or mashing it up, excluding the common allergy inducing foods of course until after a year or so. I found an alarming article (www.cspinet.org) about how some jarred foods have only about 30% food in them. I like to trust myself in what I feed my baby rather than the marketing companies out for a buck. Way to go for looking for something other than the easy convenient way!

We have a 16 month old and he's been eating what we eat since about 10 mos. w/the exception of citrus and eggs ...which we started at 1 year. You can flake up chicken and turkey, also turkey burgers are great (cut into small pieces). Sting or any kind of small pieces of cheese, whole milk baby yogurt (Stonyfield), frozen waffles topped with mango. You can buy fronzen mango and it's great for b'fast. Cheerios. Avocado is great for baby's skin. the list goes on and one. My child didn't have teeth until 1 year, but don't worry they do quite well gumming the food as long as the pieces are small.

C.,

I have found that good old chicken soup works GREAT. I offer my kids carrots, then parsnip, zuchini and chicken individualy. Then I just make a soup and "puree" it with a little consistity because at 11 months some kids want finger foods.
Any mushy foods Banannas, Yoguart, cottage cheese, corn peas. Lots of 11 month olds like these finger foods.

I have lots more ideas if your intersted.
Good luck, every kids different in their food needs.

T.

My daughter always liked cottage cheese with a little sweetened condensed milk mixed in. Also yogurt or ultra-thick homemade smoothies were always a hit.

Any fruit or veggie pureed can be substituted for the canned stuff; just keep trying different things one by one and see what he likes!