Avocado – Goooood

Isa’s lunch was delivered via spoon yesterday – her first-ever “solid” food. It should have come as no surprise that our big (at just shy of seven months she weighs 18-plus pounds), healthy baby devoured her first meal: avocado mixed with breastmilk, pureed and strained to a silky consistency.

Her meal started and ended with being breastfed, but for the main course she took to the spoon and ate until she didn’t want any more. Just as we hoped, she leaned back and closed her mouth when she had had enough.

Conventional wisdom suggests a baby’s first food should be rice cereal fortified with iron. However, I like the idea that Isla’s first bite was of whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense food, naturally rich in vitamins, minerals and good fats. My naturopath agrees, as do other health care professionals.

This post, from Your Green Baby, called Rice Cereal vs. Real Food, has great information about some of the drawbacks to introducing rice cereal as a baby’s first food.

And in a story published by msnbc.com, Dr. David Ludwig, a specialist in pediatric nutrition from the Children's Hospital Boston, says some studies suggest rice and other highly processed grain cereals could actually be among the worst foods for infants.

“These foods are in a certain sense no different from adding sugar to formula. They digest very rapidly in the body into sugar, raising blood sugar and insulin levels” and could contribute to later health problems, including obesity, he says.

So, avocado it is for the next five or six days (to minimize sensitization that may occur when the same food is eaten for seven days straight) until Isla is introduced to a new, equally healthy food.