Vegan for Life by Jack Norris; Virginia Messina

Author:Jack Norris; Virginia Messina
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780738214931
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2011-07-12T19:05:23+00:00

First Protein Foods

At around seven months, your baby will be ready to drink apple juice from a cup and explore protein-rich foods. This is when the diet of a baby in a vegan household starts to look a little bit different from that of other infants. First protein-rich foods for vegan infants include legumes (cook them thoroughly and puree them), well-mashed tofu, and soy yogurt. This is a good time to start introducing vegetables with a stronger flavor like kale and collards. You can temper their flavors by pureeing them with bland or sweet foods like applesauce, tofu, or avocado.

Infants are usually ready for finger foods, like chunks of tofu or meat analogs, bread, and crackers, at ten months, and by the first birthday they can have nut butters or tahini spread thinly on crackers.

A few things to keep in mind for vegan babies:

• Talk to your pediatrician about supplements. Vitamin D is usually recommended for breast-fed infants in both vegan and omnivore families. Iron is sometimes recommended beginning at around four months, but that will depend on other foods in your baby’s diet. Breast-fed vegan infants need vitamin B12 supplements only if the mother’s diet isn’t adequate. The table on page 146 shows suggested supplements for breast-fed vegan infants.

• When your baby is ready for solid foods, introduce them one at a time, offering one new food every three to four days. This makes it easy to identify any food allergies right away.

• Never give babies unpasteurized juice or cider, or any kind of corn syrup or honey, all of which can cause serious illness.

• Be careful not to overdo it with juices. Too much juice can displace other nutritious foods in a baby’s diet and can also cause diarrhea. Limit your infant to 6 ounces of juice per day and avoid juices with added sweeteners.

• Don’t give a baby any milk other than breast milk or infant formula before the first birthday. Regular soy, rice, hemp, and almond milks don’t have the right balance of nutrients for infants and shouldn’t be offered until your baby is a year old (these milks can, however, be used in small amounts in food preparation).

• Don’t offer foods that can cause choking like whole tofu hotdogs, popcorn, nuts, hard candies and grapes. Don’t offer infants nut and seed butters by the spoonful or spread too thickly on bread.

• Don’t salt or sweeten foods.

DAILY SUPPLEMENTS FOR BREAST-FED VEGAN BABIES

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