Eat Up: Food for Children of All Ages

Feeding toddlers can become more difficult as they start asserting their independence. They quickly realise that one of the easiest ways to do this is to refuse the food that their anxious parents are trying to persuade them to eat. Most parents worry at some stage that their child is not eating enough, and it’s tempting to compromise by giving in to demands for snacks or sweet foods instead of proper meals. At this critical time, it is important to stick to your principles and continue to offer healthy food at regular intervals.

No child will intentionally starve itself but a child that is constantly offered alternative dishes will soon exploit this situation for all it’s worth. And, of course, some of them just lose interest in food. This is where presentation becomes important. Food on sticks like koftas or satay is fun to eat, and dipping foods such as crudités with guacamole are messy but very nutritious. Eating together as a family and allowing your toddler to dip in and take bits and pieces of your meal is the best way of getting them to enjoy the whole sociable experience of eating without putting them under too much pressure.

Milk

From about seven months you can start using whole cow’s milk in your cooking. You should continue breastfeeding or feeding your baby formula feed until 12 months. Making the switch to full-fat milk as a drink should happen at about one year, though your baby can eat dairy produce such as yoghurt and cheese from about six months. The use of unmodified (pasteurised) cow’s milk as a drink should be avoided before 12 months because it is a very poor source of iron, and is low on vitamins, particularly those essential vitamins C and D. Alternatively, a so-called ‘follow-on formula’ can be used, although the benefits over an ordinary formula are not well defined.

If your baby is reluctant to take solids which are rich in iron (red meats and green vegetables) it is wise to continue a milk formula to 18 months. Don’t give skimmed or semi-skimmed milk to babies and children under five as they need the calories and fatty acids that full-fat milk provides. We are so used to the idea that a healthy diet is a low-calorie one that it’s easy to forget that small children need calories to help them grow.

Very occasionally babies suffer from a condition called lactose intolerance, which means that they lack an enzyme in the intestine required to break down the sugar in milk into simpler sugars. If you suspect your baby might be lactose intolerant (symptoms include nausea, bloating, wind and diarrhoea) you should seek advice from your GP.

Food Allergies

Allergic reactions to foods are uncommon in infancy and probably affect less than 2% of babies. Vomiting, diarrhoea, skin rashes and poor weight gain are the usual symptoms and cow’s milk is the usual culprit. The reactions occur after each exposure to the food, and a single vomit or loose stool should not be interpreted as a sign of food allergy. Other foods which most frequently cause allergic reactions in this age group are eggs, soya, wheat, citrus fruit, fish and peanuts. In rare cases, the reaction can be severe, and cause the rapid onset of swelling of the lips and face, and breathing difficulties (anaphylaxis). If this happens dial 999.

Children almost always grow out of the food allergies they experience as babies, but it may take two to three years. It is therefore wise to seek medical advice if you think your baby is showing an allergic reaction to a food. In particular, it is important to make sure that by excluding an offending food you are not giving your baby a nutritionally inadequate diet (by excluding milk for example). It is also wise to reintroduce the food under medical supervision.

Food allergies are much more likely to happen if there is a history of allergies in your family, in which case you can minimise the risks of food allergy by breastfeeding for as long as possible. Don’t introduce solids until four to six months of age and start with foods that are least likely to cause allergic reactions, such as single-grain cereals, vegetables and non-citrus fruits. If you buy processed food always read the label.

Try not to worry when introducing new foods to your child – remember that food allergies affect only a tiny minority. If your child does develop allergies, my fellow chef Giorgio Locatelli is a shining example of how to cope with them. When his daughter, Marguerita, was one year old it turned out she was allergic to a whole host of different foods. This put poor Marguerita in hospital, where she had all sorts of tests. Giorgio has to exercise all his culinary skills when cooking for her and he has invented a remarkable ketchup recipe. In case you are ever unfortunate enough to find yourself in a similar situation, here it is.

Giorgio Locatelli’s Ketchup

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 onions, peeled and finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

3 tablespoons water

2 ripe bananas, peeled and chopped

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Juice of ½ lemon

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and gently cook the onion until soft. Add the garlic and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Process in a blender until smooth. Leave to cool, then refrigerate.

Salt

Babies should not have any added salt until they are one year old, because their kidneys are too immature to cope with it. After a year, try and keep salt to a minimum in their diet. When cooking a family meal you can do this by taking out your child’s portion before adding seasoning, if practical. Salt is added to many commercially processed foods such as crisps and other pre-salted snack foods, and stock cubes, so be careful that you aren’t giving your child salt unintentionally by including these foods in their diet, and always check the labels of any processed food you buy.

Although some first foods such as baby rice and purées may taste bland to an adult palate, remember that your baby is tasting them for the first time, and their flavour will be very strong compared to the milk they are used to. British adults consume about 9g of salt per day when the recommended maximum is 6g, so getting the whole family to cut down is not a bad idea. It’s up to you whether you use salt when cooking recipes from this book. Some of them will definitely need seasoning (unless you are giving them to a child under one, of course), whereas you might find with others that you can get away without any salt at all. It is always better to confine the salt to cooking than adding it later to the plate.

Food Additives

Food additives have been associated with skin complaints, behavioural problems, asthma and many other medical conditions in young children, who are particularly vulnerable to them. Avoiding additives completely is difficult – the only way is to make sure that everything your child eats is fresh and unprocessed. Though having an E number means that an ingredient has passed certain EU safety tests, it doesn’t mean that it is any good for us or our children. Colours, preservatives, antioxidants, stabilisers, flavour enhancers, glazing agents and artificial flavourings should all be avoided if possible. Even products that come with reassuring health claims such as ‘no artificial colours or preservatives’ may well contain artificial flavourings. ‘No added sugar’ may mean the product contains chemical sweeteners such as saccharin or aspartane, which are banned from foods for children under twelve months and have been linked with serious health problems. When shopping for food, the best strategy is to read the label and go for products that contain a short list of identifiable ingredients. Avoid anything you don’t recognise as food – for example, acidity regulator, glucono delta-lactone or maltodextrin. You and your children definitely don’t need these in your diet.

Sugar and salt are added to many processed foods unnecessarily so that children (and adults) will find them more palatable. Sugar can be associated with behavioural problems, so if your child is sensitive to it, avoid processed foods. It may be deceptively labelled under many other names such as sucrose, glucose, fructose, glucose syrup and corn syrup. Fructose, the natural sugar present in fruit, is slowly absorbed as energy when eaten in fruit but if it is separated from the fruit fibre and turned into, say, a fruit-flavoured drink, it is absorbed like any refined sugar. Honey and brown sugar have healthier connotations but they too are absorbed in exactly the same way as refined sugar so they do not present an acceptable alternative.

Freezing Children’s Foods

Certain foods freeze better than others. Purées, sauces, soups and most meat and fish dishes generally freeze well, although some dishes containing garlic don’t. Thawed frozen food should not be refrozen unless it has been thoroughly cooked – for example, if you use frozen uncooked meat to make a shepherd’s pie or frozen peas to make a purée. When preparing foods to go in the freezer, cook them thoroughly, cool them down as quickly as possible, then package them for freezing when completely cold. For small babies, freeze purées in sterilised ice-cube trays and, when frozen, knock out the cubes and put them into freezer bags clearly labelled with the contents and the expiry date. Larger containers can be used for older babies and toddlers, but check that they are suitable for the freezer as some containers may shatter below certain temperatures.