Should i give my son infant cereal?

Question

He's 6months old, started solids 2wks ago, fruits & veggies. I don't see the point in giving him cereal, it's just to practice right?

Why should i give him or why should i not?

Thanx

Answer 1

The adult equivalent of baby cereal is white bread.  There's nothing healthy about it (aside from being fortified with vitamins- but why not just feed baby foods that have those vitamins naturally?).  Skip it.  There's no need for it.

Answer 2

Captain crunch and then let him chase it down with a cold Killian's. Break feast of champions

Answer 3

You don't have too but I might recommend just a bit mixed in with some fruit maybe just once a day ( for the iron ).

Answer 4

It is just to practice and it is perfectly fine to skip it if you want, not a big deal. I felt the same way until i found a decent baby cereal. Its called happy bellies organic cereal. They make it in brown rice cereal, oatmeal and mixed grain. this is a healthy alternative to the basic gerber rice cereal that is like white bread. The happy bellies cereal has probiotics in it and that is great for a healthy intestinal tract and can help prevent allergies. It is the only baby cereal recommended by Dr. Sears. But again it is not going to hurt your baby if he doesn't get it. My daughter is 7 months old and  loves her oatmeal, its her favorite thing. Check out this website and see if it is something you are interested in. I see it on the shelf of every supermarket by the baby cereal  

Answer 5

if he is already eating the fruit and veg then i would try the infant cereal my twins were eating it from 4months now 8 months my health visitor even told me to try it then as tehey were not satisfied enough with their milk. cow and gate do a good baby cereal one from 4months then one from 7months u just mix it with their usual milk if he just starting i would maybe start with the 4months one just to see how he gets on

Answer 6

If he's already on fruits and veggies, cereal isn't really a necessity...but it would give him just a little more variety, and possibly a better mix of vitamins.

It's really up to you.  I would try a little and see how he reacts.  He might find it bland compared to the other foods and not care for it at all.

HTH

Answer 7

Six months is when most pediatricians, people say to start your baby on solid foods. Introduce new foods slowly. If you want to give your son cereal Cheerios is the best food to give him, it's really healthy and is the easiest to eat. If he doesn't like Cheerios then honey-nut Cheerios is sweet and babies like it more. Make sure your in the room while he eat's in in case he chokes, you should do this with any solid food meal.You should give him some because your supposed to introduce more and more solid foods to the point that he can eat almost any type of food. Cereal is the best to practice with.

Answer 8

the infant cereal has a lot of nutrients in it that they dont get from baby food but those nutrients are available in formula too. its usually used as a started food

Answer 9

if he is 6 months...then he can have cereal.

Answer 10

The cereal is a good source of iron and protein.

Answer 11

Baby cereal is disgusting.

Make healthy food choices for your baby -and that means whole grains.  Not over-processed grains.

Also there is no need for grains until much later.  Meat is a far better weaning food.  It has iron the baby can actually use, also zinc, protein, fat, and many other things grains lack.  Babies are also able to digest meat proteins and fats easier than anything else -breastmilk is basically a "meat".

Also, use your common sense: if a product or type of product spends a lot of money on ads that say that you/your child "NEED" their product then its probably not true.  If you really needed it they wouldn't have to tell you that.  Also the more a product has to say its "better" (more accurate, more nutritious, safer, whatever).  The clearest example of this is pregnancy tests.

Compare the "EPT" brand and "Clear Blue" on this chart which spends a lot of money telling you its the most sensitive to oh the walmart brand (Equate) or the Dollartree brand (New Tree) which I have yet to see an ad for. http://www.peeonastick.com/hpts.html

Why not cereal?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9646449/page...

Take rice cereal, for example. Under conventional American wisdom, it's the best first food. But Butte says iron-rich meat — often one of the last foods American parents introduce — would be a better choice.

Dr. David Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston, a specialist in pediatric nutrition, says some studies suggest rice and other highly processed grain cereals actually could 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.

The lack of variety in the American approach also could be a problem. Exposing infants to more foods may help them adapt to different foods later, which Ludwig says may be key to getting older children to eat healthier.

http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/solids...

Cereal is not at all necessary, particularly the baby cereals. Regular (whole grain) oatmeal is more nutritious for your baby.

http://www.askdrsears.com/faq/ci2.asp

The truth is, there is nothing special about these foods that makes them better to start out with. Babies don't actually even need rice cereal

http://www.llli.org/llleaderweb/LV/LVDec...

Meat provides additional protein, zinc, B-vitamins, and other nutrients which may be in short supply when the decrease in breast milk occurs. A recent study from Sweden suggests that when infants are given substantial amounts of cereal, it may lead to low concentrations of zinc and reduced calcium absorption (Persson 1998). Dr. Nancy Krebs has shared preliminary results from a large infant growth study suggesting that breastfed infants who received pureed or strained meat as a primary weaning food beginning at four to five months, grow at a slightly faster rate. Dr. Krebs' premise is that inadequate protein or zinc from complementary foods may limit the growth of some breastfed infants during the weaning period. Both protein and zinc levels were consistently higher in the diets of the infants who received meat (Krebs 1998). Thus the custom of providing large amounts of cereal products and excluding meat products before seven months of age may not meet the nutritional needs of all breastfed infants.

Meat has also been recommended as an excellent source of iron in infancy. Heme iron (the form of iron found in meat) is better absorbed than iron from plant sources. In addition, the protein in meat helps the baby more easily absorb the iron from other foods. Two recent studies (Makrides 1998; Engelmann 1998) have examined iron status in breastfed infants who received meat earlier in the weaning period. These studies indicate that while there is not a measurable change in breastfed babies' iron stores when they receive an increased amount of meat (or iron), the levels of hemoglobin circulating in the blood stream do increase when babies receive meat as one of their first foods.

http://www.westonaprice.org/children/nou...

Finally, respect the tiny, still-developing digestive system of your infant. Babies have limited enzyme production, which is necessary for the digestion of foods. In fact, it takes up to 28 months, just around the time when molar teeth are fully developed, for the big-gun carbohydrate enzymes (namely amylase) to fully kick into gear. Foods like cereals, grains and breads are very challenging for little ones to digest. Thus, these foods should be some of the last to be introduced. (One carbohydrate enzyme a baby's small intestine does produce is lactase, for the digestion of lactose in milk.1)

[...]

Babies do produce functional enzymes (pepsin and proteolytic enzymes) and digestive juices (hydrochloric acid in the stomach) that work on proteins and fats.12 This makes perfect sense since the milk from a healthy mother has 50-60 percent of its energy as fat, which is critical for growth, energy and development.13 In addition, the cholesterol in human milk supplies an infant with close to six times the amount most adults consume from food.13 In some cultures, a new mother is encouraged to eat six to ten eggs a day and almost ten ounces of chicken and pork for at least a month after birth. This fat-rich diet ensures her breast milk will contain adequate healthy fats.14

Thus, a baby's earliest solid foods should be mostly animal foods since his digestive system, although immature, is better equipped to supply enzymes for digestion of fats and proteins rather than carbohydrates.1 This explains why current research is pointing to meat (including nutrient-dense organ meat) as being a nourishing early weaning food.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content...

The results indicate that in a group of healthy, well growing 12-month-old Swedish infants one-quarter is iron-depleted, although iron deficiency anaemia is rare, and one-third may be zinc-depleted. The high cereal intake of Swedish infants from 6 months of age may have limited the bioavailability of both iron and zinc from the diet.

http://www.jpgn.org/pt/re/jpgn/abstract....

Conclusions: These results confirm that meat as a complementary food for breast-fed infants can provide a rich source of dietary zinc that is well absorbed. The significant positive correlation between zinc intake and exchangeable zinc pool size suggests that increasing zinc intake positively affects metabolically available zinc.

Answer 12

Besides the "practice food" argument, many proponents of rice cereal also hold it up as a good source of iron.  But there are other, better, ways to help your baby get enough iron in his diet and--as you've learned--other foods to practice with .  The vast majority of commercially available infant rice cereal is over processed and high in carbohydrates.  It is quickly digested and has been compared to processed sugar (which we know not to give to an infant).  I say skip it.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9646449/

Answer 13

you should give him breakfast because it's a majorly important meal of the day.  So you want to start that breakfast eating habit so that by the time he's onto solids instead of milk feeds he will be getting the nutrition he needs for his day ahead correctly.  

It doesn't matter whether you give him something else instead of cereal so long as you're giving him something with the same nutrients; iron especially is what most baby cereals offer.  At 6 months the iron the baby has banked until now start to deplete rapidly and they need iron from outside sources.  So cereals are an easy way of replenishing that - but like I say, it's up to you how you complete his diet, so long as it's completed.

Answer 14

The only reason why they advise to give cereal first is to get their tummies ready for the weight of the food. Also, there is a very small chance of your baby being allergic to the rice cereal. Seeing as you have already given veggies, there is absolutely no reason to give him rice cereal. Veggies are much better anyway.

Answer 15

Babies need the cereal. The fruits and veggies are more for practice than the cereal is. There are also baby varieties of oatmeal, and maybe a mixed grain. I don't really remember, just don't give him to much becuase he still needs the formula or breast milk.

You can give him cheerioes, try the multigran ones they are very very yummy.

Also the cereal is a good way to get eggs started when he's old enough (I'm can't remember when they start eggs). Of course they just start with the yolks. So either boil them and peel the white off or just scramble the yolk in olive oil and then add to some cereal.