Finger food vs puree

[lilac83]

M will be 9 months old on Saturday. So far she's mostly on puree food with a few finger foods (pancake, cheerios, puffs). For those of you who used purees, when did you start transitioning to mostly finger food? I would also like to start offering her more of the food from family meals. Is it too early to offer her food with seasonings or red sauce? What about mayo/dressing?

[Buntybear]

Bumping for you x

[*Ali*]

With Cadan I think it was about 7mo we transitioned to mostly finger foods or at least chopped foods rather than mashed or puréed. We'd always done lots of finger foods though. By 9mo I would definitely be looking at stopping purées and moving up to coarser foods.

Babies under 1yo should only have a max of 1g of salt a day which will easily come from that naturally occurring in milk, veg and meat etc so I wouldn't offer any foods that are processed or have added salt no. Between 1-2yo they can handle up to 2g a day. Until then I would season with herbs and spices rather than salt.

[creations]

red sauce? What about mayo/dressing?

I would avoid red sauce because of the salt and sugar content but I used to make home made dips for DS, very simple things like home made salad dressings without salt (or honey) eg olive oil with lemon juice and a little mint, DS would even dip in just lemon juice.

[*Ali*]

By red sauce do you mean tomato ketchup? I think the salt in a serving of that is like a third of baby's daily allowance. Mayo is marginally better I think. I'd make sure the egg has been pasteurised though and isn't homemade with raw egg.

[lauradj]

My DS is 8 months now and he's doing some finger foods; really ripe fruit, steamed veg, toast with butter etc and I do a combination of mashed/lumpy foods and smoother dishes, though purees are pretty much gone.  There are some really easy pasta tomato sauce recipes if that's what you're looking for and they sneak extra vegetables in which is a bonus.