Eat Up: Food for Children of All Ages. Mark Hix

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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