From first tastes to expanded menus
Your baby is now getting the hang of eating pureed veg and fruits from a spoon – now it’s time to expand his menu!
Once your baby is used to spoon-feeding, you can introduce some new foods and savoury meals that include iron rich foods like pureed meat, poultry and fish, along with pureed potatoes or pasta and veg.
The Baby Balance Stage 1 range has lots of variety to choose from.
The range includes foods from all of the key food groups (red meat, poultry, fish, vegetarian, fruit and dairy desserts), and all of these have colour-coded caps to help you find what you need. With the Baby Balance range you know that you are giving the best to your baby as the range has:
- Low in Salt
- No Added Sugar (except in 4 dessert recipes)
- Uses over 21 different varieties of vegetables and 8 different types of fruits in the Stage 1 baby balance range.
Cow & Gate Stage 1 Babyfoods »
No salt
If are you are preparing your own meals, make sure not to add salt or added flavourings that may contain salt, like stock cubes. The meals you offer may taste a little bland to you, but they are fine for your baby.
Lots of variety
It’s important to introduce different flavours at an early age. A baby with a wider taste in food is much easier to shop for, and when your baby becomes a toddler you’ll have fewer teatime tantrums and – just maybe – less food will end up on the floor!
Smooth consistency
Your baby is not yet ready for lumpy foods, but as his appetite grows you can make up his cereal to a thicker pureed consistency. Meals containing starchy foods like potato or pasta will naturally be a little thicker but still smooth enough for your baby to handle.
Why you need to include iron rich foods
By the time your baby reaches 6 months of age, the store of iron that once fuelled his rapid growth (particularly his brain) starts to run out. So from 6 months onwards, your baby needs to gets all the iron he needs from the food and milk (breast or formula) in his diet.
If you’re exclusively breastfeeding your baby, you need to be particularly careful to include iron rich foods in his diet from 6 months on.
If you’re bottle-feeding your baby, around 6 months is the time to move onto a follow-on milk such as Cow & Gate Step Up. It’s an excellent source of iron and is also enriched with vitamin C, which helps the body absorb the iron more efficiently.