Debunking Nutrition Myths with Mother Hen #NutritionMonth

As parents one of the most important things we can give our children are great nutritional habits that will last them a lifetime. I know personally we focused on ensuring we introduced a great variety of healthy and organic products to our children at an early age. There were the typical foods that terrified us with our first son – eggs, peanuts and kiwis (all because of family food allergies!) combined with not feeling confident on when to introduce these foods (old school methods versus new research).

Are you familiar with all the changes that have been recommended when introducing solids to your infant? It can be hard to keep up with all the changing information – not to mention keeping your sanity during that first year after birth! Mother Hen has developed this fantastic nutrition guide (see the below picture) to help parents out.

Some of the key ideas that I took home from their guide:

• It is still recommended that parents exclusively breast or formula feed up to six months of age. After six months of age, you can begin to introduce iron rich foods such as chicken, pork, beef, cereals (this was new to me when I had my second son!). Most people tend to follow this with vegetables and then fruits.

• The Dietitians of Canada have confirmed that by delaying the introduction of the most recognized allergens (peanuts, eggs, etc..) does not prevent the development of allergies. They DO recommend that you wait a couple of days after introducing new foods before adding in another new food to ensure no allergic reaction takes place.

• Another typical myth I loved that Mother Hen identified – the bland diet for infants! I have seen so many parents do this and you really don’t have to! Baby’s taste buds are different from our own so they may love what you do not. Our youngest loves ground beef curry and has been this way since we started giving it to him around ten months.

Looking for more nutritional information? Head over to the Mother Hen website, they even offer a fantastic array of recipes on their site.

Throughout the month of March – for every Mother Hen product purchased they will be donating $1.00 worth of baby food to local food banks through their March Moms Helping Moms Program. Make sure to follow Mother Hen on Facebook for more information through out the month of March.