How Can You Best Introduce Fruits Into Your Child’s Diet?
Fruit has many benefits for children. It doesn’t matter if they eat the fruit themselves or consume it through juice and jam. Children should be familiar with fruit from an early age and get used to eating it without additives.
Thanks to the high nutritional value of fruit, you can introduce it while you are still breastfeeding.
Fruit can be introduced into your child’s diet in several ways. This can be in the form of juice, pulp, jam and jelly.
When fruit is ripe, it can be eaten easily, both raw and cooked.
Remember that you lose a significant amount of minerals and nutrients when you cook fruit. As a result, the nutritional value of fruit is reduced when you cook it.
Children have sensitive stomachs, so it’s best to give them cooked fruit. You can cook the fruit in a small amount of water. After the fruit is cooked, you can save the water so that it can be drunk later.
The skin of fruit is usually less digestible than the pulp, so children are better off eating fruit without the skin.
To improve the process of introducing fruit into your child’s diet, we have prepared a simple recipe that you can make for your child while you are still breastfeeding.
Apple sauce
Ingredients
- 50 grams of apples without skin
- 100 grams of water
- 50 grams of lactated ringer (this can be found at pharmacies)
Preparation
- Place the apples in a juicer or blender and mix with the other ingredients.
- Warm the sauce and stir it before serving. Ready to eat!
There are fruits such as bananas or dried chestnuts that are very beneficial to your child’s diet. This fruit is rich in carbohydrates and low in fats and proteins.
Fruits such as dates, grapes and figs are rich in sugar and minerals and have a high nutritional value. Children can easily eat them in the form of jelly or juice.
Melons and apricots contain many vitamins and are very juicy. Thanks to their high water content, they are refreshing, alkalizing and cleansing.
You should check with your pediatrician before giving your children fruits such as orange, lime, passion fruit, and pineapple. This fruit can trigger allergies. It is recommended to wait until your child is 18 months old.
It is important to give fruit during breakfast or immediately after breakfast. Then they have all the vitamins they need during the day.
Recommended Daily Portions
Depending on the vitamin intake, fruits should be consumed in these portions:
- Banana: 1/2
- Melon: 1/2 cup, cut into chunks
- Watermelon: 1 serving of 6 by 4 centimeters
- Mango: 1 small piece
- Pear: 1/2
- Guava: 1/2
- Papaya: 1/2
Remember that the fruit you offer must be appropriate for the child’s age. That is why it is important to contact your pediatrician.
It is completely normal for a child to refuse to eat fruit at first. This is because it is a new taste that their taste buds have to get used to as they have only drunk milk so far.
Fruit should not be introduced into a child ‘s diet until after 6 months .
If you introduce fruit into your child ‘s diet , you should avoid sugar until he is 12 months old. Take advantage of the natural sugars found in the fruit you give, you don’t need to add sugar.
Sugar gives you calories, which is bad for a growing child’s pancreas. Sugar can therefore have bad consequences after a long period of use.
Therefore, fruit should be eaten without adding anything, especially during the early years of your child’s life.
Main benefits of fruits in the diet
Eating fruit has many benefits. Here are a few:
- Fruit promotes tissue development.
- The smell stimulates brain activity.
- Fruit helps maintain healthy gums.
- It is important for the proper functioning of nerves and muscles.
- Some have laxative properties.
- They stimulate the secretion of saliva during chewing.
- Fruit regulates digestion.
- The colors stimulate attention.
- They increase the amount of red blood cells in the body and also improve oxygenation.
In short, introducing fruit into your child’s diet can provide many benefits.
If we as parents take the right measures, we will create very healthy habits for our child that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
