With the arrival of complementary feeding, new questions come to parents. Most couples and mothers wonder about the introduction of foods, which are those that should be given first or which will be the best cereal for your baby. The most common is that the pediatrician gives you some guidelines on the introduction of foods, but generally they are very basic and too brief.
First you should know that the baby's diet should be exclusively milk up to 6 months. This is what the World Health Organization recommends, and whenever possible, the recommendation is that the food be breast milk. From 6 months, they must introduce food following some recommendations y guidelines that we leave you in this link.
The introduction to cereal
Cereals can be introduced at 6 months like the rest of foods, however, there are exceptions and in some cases it can be started at 4 months. Consult with your pediatrician before giving any type of food to your baby and together you will decide if the time has come and how you should start. It is important that cereals are gluten-free, a measure that is intended to minimize the risks of developing celiac disease.
Now, once it is clear that the first cereals should be those that are gluten-free, you will surely wonder Which are the best and healthiest for my baby?
How to choose the best cereals for my baby?
There is a tendency to think that the only way to obtain baby cereals is through industrial preparations that are marketed for babies. A mistake that is made daily and that, unfortunately, is something that pediatricians themselves recommend indiscriminately.
The prepared cereals are completely unnecessary for the babyThey are full of sugars and other substances that are harmful to children and therefore are not healthy or appropriate. On the packaging you will find information that can mislead you, "no added sugars" does not mean that the product is sugar free. This is because the process called "dextrinate" or "hydrolyzed", converts complex carbohydrates into simple ones, that is, into sugar.
On the other hand, all the additions and fortifications that are included in cereal preparations for the baby, are unnecessary if the little one is fed correctly.
You can look for the best cereals on the market, the most expensive and ecological to avoid sugar and other unhealthy substances, but you will be paying an excessive price for something that you can find for a fraction and prepare yourself at home.
The best cereals for baby
The best food for your child is the one that you prepare at home, in a homemade way and using more favorable cooking and packaging methods. In the same way that you prepare the porridge with fruits or the vegetable puree, you can prepare cereal porridges at home in a very simple way.
This will ensure that your baby receives the best food free of unhealthy substances. You will even be saving a lot of money since specific products for babies are much more expensive. Buy a kilo of good quality rice and you can prepare countless porridges for your child, interesting, right?
In this link we explain how to make a rice porridge homemade for your baby. You will find two simple rice-based techniques. That in addition, you can apply to other gluten-free cereals such as corn or quinoa. Even later when you introduce the cereal with gluten, you can use the recipe since you will always have to follow similar steps.
On the other hand, preparing food at home will allow you to modify the texture of the porridgesThis will help your baby get used to "working" on food. Something that you cannot do with the prepared porridge, since you will always get the same texture.
However, the circumstances of each father and mother are completely different. If you need to resort to prepared cereals for any reason, you shouldn't feel worse about it.