Types, methods and effects of nutritional paste for children

Currently, nutritional pastes suitable for children aged 6 months and above are mainly divided into three categories: cereal basics, vegetable, fruit, meat and egg upgraded versions, and medicinal and food-based preparations. The core of the general method is "preprocessing of ingredients → cooking → low-temperature batter below 40°C → seasoning as needed." The core function is to adapt to children's underdeveloped chewing and digestion abilities, supplement the nutritional gaps in daily meals, and some formulas can help improve minor digestive discomfort.

To be honest, my baby has made no less than 50 kinds of nutritional pastes since he was fed complementary food at 6 months old and is now 3 years old. He has stepped into pitfalls, tried folk remedies, and argued with the elderly. He has accumulated a lot of practical experience, which is just enough to explain this matter thoroughly.

Let’s first talk about the most commonly used cereal basics, which are the first cereals for babies when they first add complementary foods. Many parenting bloggers said before that homemade rice cereal is healthier than finished products. I believed it at first. I gave my baby ordinary rice cereal for half a month. However, I was found to be slightly iron deficient during child care. The doctor told me that the iron content of ordinary rice is extremely low, and it is non-heme iron. The absorption rate is only about 3%, which is completely unable to meet the needs of a 6-month-old baby after the iron from the mother is exhausted. The current consensus in the industry is that the first food supplement is to give priority to iron-fortified finished rice cereal that meets the national standard GB 10769. If you really want to make your own, you have to add 1g of high-speed iron pig liver powder that meets the infant standard to the prepared rice cereal to make up for the iron gap. I usually use 40°C warm water to make the finished paste when I'm in a hurry. It won't make lumps while stirring. ； If you want to make your own, soak the japonica rice for 3 hours in advance, steam it for 20 minutes, add an equal amount of warm and cool rice and beat it finely. There is no need to add additional sugar or salt at all. The molecules of this kind of paste are small, which is not burdensome for the baby's newly developed stomach. It mainly replenishes carbohydrates and basic energy. If it is supplemented with iron, it can also prevent iron deficiency anemia that is common in infants and young children. I later gave the baby rice cereal with pork liver powder for a month, and the next time the baby's iron retention index was normal.

After your baby has been eating pure grain paste for half a month and is no longer allergic, you can slowly add fruits, vegetables, meat and eggs to make an upgraded nutritional paste. My child's favorite food is broccoli, cod and millet paste, and he can drink half a bowl every time he makes it. The method is also simple: soak the millet for 1 hour in advance and cook until it blooms, marinate the cod with lemon slices for 15 minutes to remove the fishy smell and steam for 8 minutes, break off the broccoli into small florets and blanch it for 3 minutes to remove the oxalic acid. Put the three together and beat with a small amount of the water used to cook the millet. Beat it into fine particles, which is just suitable for babies over 8 months old to practice chewing. Interestingly, my mother and I argued no less than three times about how fine the paste should be. My mother always said it should be as fine as water so that the baby would not get stuck when swallowing. However, the child care doctor clearly stated that after 8 months, the coarseness of the paste should be gradually increased. If the paste is kept fine and without residue, it will affect the development of the baby's chewing and swallowing ability, and it will easily get stuck in the throat when eating solid food. I later compromised on it and made it finer when I first added the meat and vegetables, leaving a few small particles after two weeks. My baby now chews the steamed buns and ribs very well without any jams. This upgraded paste is equivalent to breaking up the nutrition of a meal. It can supplement protein, vitamins, and dietary fiber, and can mix vegetables that the baby doesn’t like. For example, my baby doesn’t like spinach, so I mixed the blanched spinach into the tomato beef paste. He can’t eat it at all, and he’s not very picky about food.

There is also a type of conditioning nutrition paste that many parents are concerned about, and it is also the most controversial. My baby used to eat a lot of food, his tongue was thick and greasy, his mouth had a sour smell, and he didn't even want to drink milk. My mother found a recipe from her hometown. She used fried yam, fried chicken gizzards, poria, and fried malt to make powder. She scooped a spoonful at a time and made a paste for the baby to drink. After drinking it for three days, her appetite improved. However, when I checked the information, I found that the view of evidence-based pediatrics is that the conditioning effects of these medicinal and food ingredients are not supported by enough large-scale clinical data. It is not recommended for parents to give them to their babies casually, especially if they are used as ordinary complementary foods for a long time, which may affect the development of their own digestive functions. My own experience is that if the baby only has slight overeating or constipation and no other discomfort, it can be used once or twice occasionally: for example, if the baby is constipated, use prune, dragon fruit and oatmeal paste, which is much safer than Kaisellu. ； If your baby has pathological digestive problems, such as long-term diarrhea or severe food accumulation, you still need to go to the hospital first. Don't delay things by blindly using dietary therapy.

By the way, I once stepped into a huge pitfall. When I made spinach paste for my baby, I didn't blanch it. As a result, the baby had green stools for two days. Later I learned that spinach and amaranth, vegetables with high oxalic acid, must be blanched for 1-2 minutes before making paste, which can not only remove oxalic acid, but also reduce pesticide residues. Also, the beating temperature should not exceed 40°C. If you use freshly boiled water, heat-sensitive nutrients such as vitamin C will be basically destroyed, which is equivalent to wasting it. There are also many controversies about seasoning. Elderly people always think that it is tasteless and children will not like to eat it. I have tried adding half a pitted steamed red date or two or three steamed soft raisins and beating it. The natural sweetness also makes children like to drink it. It is much healthier than adding white sugar. It also meets the feeding requirements of no added free sugar within 1 year old.

In fact, after all is said and done, there is no unified standard answer for children’s nutritional paste. Some children are allergic to mango, so don’t touch mango paste.； Some babies are lactose intolerant, so don’t add milk to the paste. As long as it meets the baby’s taste and digestion conditions and can supplement nutrition - after all, raising babies is not an experiment, and there is no need to stick to grams and pursue perfection, right?