Why feeding baby cereal to your infant can be dangerous to his health

Personal note from Miriam:
I never gave baby cereal to my girls but started them on mashed fruit instead at about 6 months while continuing to breastfeed (i.e. banana and then apple). At about 8-9 months I added mashed raw vegetables (spinach, avocado, and barley grass powder). I learned this from the Hallelujah Diet, and it paid off! My girls were mentally advanced at every stage of their development and still are today, so I guess the Hallelujah Diet was right in saying that fruit helps brain development when babies are about 5-6 months old.

Below is an article from Dr. Mercola explaining the health problems caused by baby cereal.

Get the White Out of Baby's First Foods
Posted By Dr. Mercola | December 20 2010 |

Almost every childcare book offers the same advice about a baby's first solid meal -- start them first on rice cereal mixed with breast milk or formula. This has been received wisdom for 60 years.

But this is because in the 1950's, baby food companies launched an advertising blitz trumpeting the benefits of white rice cereal.

But there is no scientific basis for this recommendation. None at all. And now, concerned about increasing childhood obesity, some pediatricians want to change how babies eat.

If babies are getting used to the taste of highly processed white rice and flour, it could set them up for a lifetime of bad habits.

USA Today reports:

"White rice -- after processing strips away fiber, vitamins and other nutrients -- is a 'nutritional disaster' ... White rice and flour turn to sugar in the body 'almost instantly,' ... raising blood sugar and insulin levels."

Sources:
USA Today December 1, 2010


Dr. Mercola's Comments:


If you want to give your baby the best start nutritionally, do not follow the advice in most baby books encouraging you to start feeding rice cereal. Other than breast milk or formula, rice is the number one source of calories for infants in the first year of life, according to Stanford University pediatrician Alan Greene, and this is a nutritional disaster.

Optimal Nutrition for the First Year of Life

Ideally, your baby should be breastfed exclusively -- meaning no other food or water is supplemented -- for at least the first 6 months. Then, at the age of 6 or 9 months, you can begin to supplement with solid foods (while still continuing to breastfeed as well).

Choosing what those solid foods will be is incredibly important, but unfortunately most pediatricians encourage their patients to start rice cereal at about 4 to 6 months of age. White rice is a refined carbohydrate, a group of highly processed, nutritionally devoid foods that have been linked to increased rates of heart disease, insulin resistance, eye damage and cancer in adults, and are worthless nutritionally for infants as well.

Feeding infants cereal has been associated with an increased risk of type 1 diabetes and may prime your baby's appetite for a lifetime of processed carbs in the form of white bread, cookies and cakes.

A diet based on these types of refined carbs is responsible for many bulging stomachs and fat rolls in thighs and chins, and even worse, high insulin levels that lead to diabetes and suppress two other important hormones -- glucagons and growth hormones -- that are responsible for burning fat and sugar and promoting muscle development, respectively.

Insulin from excess carbohydrates promotes fat, and then wards off your body's ability to lose that fat. Excess weight and obesity not only lead to heart disease but also a wide variety of other diseases later in life.