01.11.09
The Feeding of an Infant
Everything is cultural. Every now and then I start to think that surely there must be some universal truths that are true for everyone in every culture. Like raising an infant. There have to be some dos and don’ts, right?
Wrong! Our kids’ pediatrician is teaching us that. Around Francesca’s five month check up, she hands Heidi a badly photocopied recipe called: Diet from the 6th Month. Here it is:
Make a vegetable puree with:
one potato, one carrot, one zucchini, one onion, and either some Swiss chard or celery.
Take 2-3 tablespoonfuls of the vegetable puree and add:
2 teaspoonfuls of extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoonfuls of aged Parmesan cheese
3-4 tablespoonfuls of multi grain cereal or baby pasta
10 grams of powdered meat or 60 grams of pureed meat
And so once a day for lunch, that’s what Francesca eats. For dinner, we substitute ricotta cheese instead of the meat. Starting with the seventh month we add fish instead of meat. And from seven and a half months we add ham. And then month eight brings beans (surely we’ll notice the effects of that!).
We raised three kids in America, and I don’t ever remember boiling an onion or Swiss chard for the babies lunch. I can’t think of any pediatrician that recommends ricotta or Parmesan cheese for a six month old. But we tried it, and she loves it. No gas or tummy aches from the onion. The pureed meat is just fine.
And it all proves that everything – even what we feed our kids – is completely influenced by what everyone around us does.