Introducing food to your baby can be confusing and overwhelming. Do you do babyled weaning? Purees? What should their first food be? White rice cereal, or fruit, or meat (yes, some nurses are recommending this!).

Well let’s put all that aside (though you can find that information in some of my other blog posts), and talk about what kinds of food are good to begin with.

I’m going to be bold and say that I don’t believe white rice cereal is the best first food for your baby. If you want to know why, check out my blog post here. I also don’t really think that meat should be their first food either! However, I also think it’s ok to give it to them earlier than many might think.

Beginning with some healthy vegetables, fats, fruits and protein is the best approach. Your baby’s digestive enzymes are produced based on what they chew in their mouth. The body is pretty clever like that. So we really need to be exposing our babies to a range of foods for their digestive development.

What I typically recommend is beginning with some broth (either bone broth or vegetable broth). Then move onto some low GI vegetables. They’re easy to digest but they don’t spike blood sugar (if your baby starts waking a lot after you introduce foods, think about whether you’re giving them high GI foods and triggering blood sugar imbalances). Once you’ve got some vegetables into their system and you know they’re tolerating them well, you can try some healthy fats! Think avocado, olive oil, flaxseed oil. Fish, egg yolks, or chia seeds. There are loads of healthy fats to feed your baby, and they’re easy to blend with the vegetables you’ve previously introduced.

Then you can start introducing lower GI fruits and also some protein too such as full egg, or some small pieces of meat (I like to start in soups or pasta sauce, or if your baby like baby led weaning then meatballs are fun).

The point of my article is that while it’s common to introduce white rice cereal, followed by a bunch of different fruits and vegetables, it is SO important for your baby’s brain and digestive development to introduce proteins and fats too. Plus, they’re so easy to add into their diet!