Clare Johnston talks to mum bloggers and Instagrammers who have conquered weaning with fun, colourful mealtimes – with one tot trying 100 different foods in her first month on solids.
Where once a typical weaning meal might have been a cup of mashed vegetables, or porridge made with ground oats, today’s Insta parents are thinking a whole lot more creatively.
Social trends like #100foodsbefore1, encouraging families to offer their little ones a wide variety of weaning meals and snacks to try before 12 months and share their experiences, have led to an abundance of ideas and pictures on internet platforms.
Food blogger, Jo Macdonald, from Cove Bay on the south side of Aberdeen, is mum to 18-month-old Ivy-Rose, and eight-year-old son, Ray. When, a few years ago, she decided to overhaul her lifestyle and focus on health, she began sharing her plant-based meals and healthy lifestyle tips on her blog and on social media.
And when it came to weaning Ivy-Rose, she wanted to take her newfound knowledge and encourage her daughter to eat as varied a diet as possible.
Jo, 39, explained: “I wasn’t an unhealthy eater before, but I used to eat a fairly typical diet that included fruit and vegetables as well as meat and dairy. When I was weaning Ray it was more traditional foods, like the Annabel Karmel meals of fish pie, pureed vegetables and fruit porridge.
“Then when he was around two or three I became more conscious in every aspect of my life from the skincare and the cleaning products I was using to the food I was eating. It was a gradual process from there until now I eat a 99% plant-based diet.
“When I was pregnant with Ivy-Rose I took part in a Rowett Institute about weaning and whether what you eat in pregnancy can influence what your baby is accepting of. When I weaned her it was almost completely plant-based. She does have eggs, Greek yoghurt, and a little bit of cheese but she has plant milk and she’s still breast-fed.
“My approach was to try and put different things on a plate for her to try. With each meal I would try to give a mix of fruit and vegetables, protein, carbs and fat so I was covering the main food groups.
“I made lists of fruits and vegetables, carbs, proteins and fats which I stuck on my fridge and I tried to pick different things off each list for mealtimes. I would always put a couple of vegetables, some fruit and carbs and something with fat like avocado or nut butter. I would do different things with the vegetables so I might fry courgette or aubergine with a bit of oil or cumin – just a mild taste. With broccoli or cauliflower I would boil them and chop into florets. With peas I might put a little tahini on them, so I just used what I had in the house.”
Eight-month-old April, from Dundee, had already sampled 100 different foods in her first month of weaning.
Her mum, Sarah Deuchar, 28, had been inspired by photos and recipes shared on Instagram, and decided to go down an adventurous route with her daughter that she hoped would encourage her to enjoy a varied diet.
She said: “I started weaning April just before she turned six months and I made the [what.april.eats] Instagram page about a couple of weeks in, primarily as a way to keep a diary of what I’d done and, if I have more kids in future, I can look back at what I made. I think a lot of people can forget if they don’t record it. When I started posting the pictures I got a few followers so now I share my recipes, too.
“I have no set schedule, I just wake up and think, ‘What can I make today that’s relatively quick and straightforward or that I can make a batch of and freeze?’ I’m trying to introduce April to as many foods as I can. There’s a thing on social media called #100foodsbefore1 that people do, so I was kind of aiming towards that but I reached it by the time she was seven months.”
And as a result of creating colourful meals with plenty of different-coloured fruits and vegetables to try, Sarah says her daughter is already a foodie.
“April loves everything. The only thing she turned her nose up at was homemade ice lollies. I made a smoothie lollie when it was hot, but she’s still quite young so I don’t think she understood why it was so cold. She’s a food lover like me. I studied Food and Consumer Sciences at Abertay in 2010. I decide not to pursue food as a career when I graduated but I do love cooking and I love the creative element – and this is a creative outlet, especially in lockdown.
“People enjoy getting inspiration. The other morning I posted Avril’s breakfast which was just Weetabix with yoghurt and peanut butter and someone said they were lacking inspiration, then they saw my post and made the same breakfast for their own child. It’s really nice that mums can share these ideas.”
And though Sarah’s meals are a labour of love, she says other parents shouldn’t be intimidated – the trick is to set aside some time to batch cook.
“Some days if April’s napping I try and do some batch cooking and make lots of things for the freezer then during the week I take it out to defrost. I think if the plate is bright and colourful it’s more engaging so I always do decorative things for serving like cutting cucumber and fruit pieces.
“Quite often there’s a practical reason for doing that. I’ll cut out a shape in the cucumber so there’s a hole and it makes it easier for her to hold. Hearts or flower shapes are great for her to practice her pincer grip.
“It’s a good idea to have a day a week where you can batch cook things to store in the freezer. The idea is for your meals to be baby-led and you just go with how your baby wants to eat the meal. I let April use her hands, the spoon, sometimes I’ll load a spoon and put it towards her mouth for her to take, so it’s about being relaxed and following your baby rather than worrying that they need to be able to use cutlery themselves.
“If something doesn’t work first time, give them the food again but cook or prepare it differently so it’s in a different texture.”
Though offering a variety of foods to infants through weaning is likely to positively influence their longer-term eating habits and get them used to enjoying healthier options from a young age, Jo warns that new parents shouldn’t be too discouraged if, as children grow, they become a little less enthusiastic about some foods.
She said: “Until Ivy-Rose was a year I was giving her broccoli, asparagus, courgette everything, she would just lap it up. Now she’s a bit fussier, and I think it’s a stage probably all kids go through. She’ll throw things she doesn’t like. One day she’ll eat peas and the next they’re over the floor.
“The thing I’ve learned is that just because she throws something or doesn’t eat it, I won’t stop giving that to her or putting it on her plate, whereas with Ray if he stuck peas up his nose and didn’t like them, I stopped. You learn from each child, regardless. Maybe I was a bit smug when she was eating everything. Some days she won’t eat anything but toast with bananas. All I say is, ‘Just try it and if you don’t like it then that’s okay.”
