Can I feed my baby home-cooked carrots if they are organic?
Pediatricians warn parents against preparing beets, turnips, carrots, spinach and collard greens at home because they can contain large amounts of nitrates, which can cause an unusual type of anemia. Baby food companies screen the produce they buy for nitrates and it is therefore safer to buy jars...
But how about organic produce? Is buying organic a garantee that these vegetables won't contain nitrates?
The flyer I got from my pediatrician says 1 year for all the vegetables I've listed.
- Estelle, Feb 19, 2010
4 Answers
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According to this site, it's only a concern for babies under 4 months old when their tummies aren't developed enough. But babies that young aren't typically aren't on solids yet anyways.
Thanks for the link!
- Estelle, Feb 19, 2010
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Given that a product can be considered organic with only a small percentage of what it means to be organic, I wouldn't use this as your guideline.
Just some additional information about cooking carrots that my husband and I learned recently (that apparently everyone on the internet already knew) - don't microwave carrots unless they are sufficiently covered with water or broth. You can start a fire. No kidding! There's video of this on the net.
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Our almost one year old who was exclusively breast fed from birth had carrots as one of his first foods. Our doctor said "go orange first." He said nothing at all about nitrates but my boy didn't start till about 4 months, either, closer to five mos. I think his mom was shooting for 6 months but gave in early since he loves watching the family eat and always wants to eat "people food" with us. So he ate carrots, squash and pumpkin as his early foods. We didn't worry about organic or not but most of the carrots, squash and even the pumpkin were from neighbors garden bounty (hey, this was fall in Northern MN we take what we can get).
We beat the carrots and squash, and pumkin up to a very smooth consistency and after he had been on each for a week or so we tried different blends. To this day he loves squash, he eats carrots that are just very soft, and partly mashed and he likes to handle them himself (so be sure to make sure they are cool enough and dense enough for that, but not so much that they are a choking hazard.)
Wow, I've never heard of the nitrate issue before? At what age is it safe to give kids root vegetables?
- Steve Lacy, Feb 17, 2010