As your baby grows, relying on breastfeeding alone after 6 months can no longer meet your baby’s growth needs. If you don’t add complementary foods in time, your baby’s growth and development will slow down or stagnate, and it is also easy to cause various nutritional deficiencies or infectious diseases, which is not conducive to developing good eating habits! When to add complementary foods? The recommended age to start introducing non-dairy pureed foods is 6 months of age, no earlier than 4 months of age. At this time, the infant’s milk intake is stable at about 180m1 /time and growth is good, suggesting that the infant has the digestive capacity to accept other foods. What can be eaten? 1, the first stage (6 months of age) food: should first choose to meet the needs of growth, easy to absorb, not easy to produce allergies cereal, preferably fortified with iron original flavor rice flour, rice flour can be blended with milk; the second introduced food is root vegetables, fruits, the main purpose is to train the infant’s sense of taste. Food should be spoon fed to help train swallowing function. 2.Second stage food (7-9 months old): gradually introduce second stage food for infants, including meat, eggs, fish and other animal foods and soy products. The introduction of foods should be based on local foods, paying attention to the texture, nutrient density, hygiene and variety of preparation methods. 3. Stage 3 (10-12 months old): At this stage, infants can be given crumbled, diced and finger-shaped food, and animal liver, animal blood, fish and shrimp, chicken and duck meat, and beef and mutton can be added. Infants can learn to eat by themselves with a spoon. The infant should be fed a small amount of iron fortified rice powder, from 1 to 2 spoons to several spoons, until a meal is served; the infant should be fed one kind of food to many kinds of food, and the infant should try one new food 8 to 10 times, about 3 to 5 days, until the infant is used to the taste and then change to another kind. This is to stimulate the development of the sense of taste. The single food-by-food approach can help keep track of the infant’s food allergy and identify the allergen. Type should be added in the order of “starch (cereal) – vegetable – fruit – animal”. Texture should be added in the order of “liquid (such as rice paste, vegetable water, juice, etc.) – paste (such as thick rice paste, vegetable puree, meat puree, fish puree, egg yolk, etc.) – solid (such as soft rice, rotten noodles, small steamed bun pieces, etc.), from transition from one texture to another. In the order from single to varied, from little to much, just try to eat at the beginning, try to eat a little after breastfeeding, and then gradually increase. Fish, shrimp, and shellfish are allergy-prone and should be added later than regular meat. Deep-sea fish and shrimp are better than shallow water fish and shrimp, and are less contaminated. Be careful to buy live fish and shrimp. The process of introducing food helps infants’ neuropsychological development, and attention should be paid to the texture of food and the development of children’s eating skills, such as eating with spoons and cups to promote oral coordination and learning to swallow; the transition from muddy food to minced food can help learn to chew and increase the energy density of food; grasping food with the hands can increase infants’ interest in eating and help promote hand-eye coordination and develop children’s ability to eat independently. In this process, you should give your baby enough space to “play with the food” and “grab the utensils”, and don’t be afraid to get messy. Frequently Asked Questions Do babies need to take zinc supplements? What foods contain zinc? During the first 6 months of life, full-term newborns can maintain their zinc requirements because of the high zinc stores in the baby’s body and the high zinc content of colostrum. However, after 6 months of age, infants need to obtain zinc supplementation through complementary foods. Therefore, complementary foods and iron-zinc fortified rice flour are the first choice for zinc supplementation, and lean meat, animal offal (liver puree), sea fish (fish puree) and shrimp are rich in zinc. What should be the ratio for each type of supplement? There is no absolute ratio to follow, it can be arranged flexibly, especially for infants under 1 year old, the main food is milk, they should eat 600-800ml of breast milk or formula, 40-110g of cereals, 25-50g of vegetables, 25-50g of fruits, 15g of egg yolk or 50g of eggs, and 25-40g of fish/poultry/animal meat every day. How can I tell if the addition of complementary foods is enough? If your child is not crying and sleeping well after eating, and the data of height, weight and head circumference are within the normal range when measured regularly, you know that the supplemental food is sufficient. After the age of one, the child can be examined every three months until he/she enters kindergarten. Does my child need to drink milk when he/she is ready to eat? Children who can eat solid foods at the age of 2 should also drink 400 ml of milk every day. This will not only ensure a certain amount of protein, fat and carbohydrate intake, but also ensure the intake of trace elements such as calcium, zinc and vitamins such as vitamin D. Never assume that after being able to eat adult food, solid food can completely replace milk.