While there are no hard and fast guidelines about sodium for babies, I recommend choosing products with less than 100 mg sodium per serving if you’re going to be serving it to your baby

SALT - even if you DO find a no or almost-no sugar cereal, it’s likely to be loaded with salt. Because you are hard-pressed to find no added sugar cereals, almost all cereals are ruled out for babies because of the added sugar situation. SUGAR - as mentioned above, AAP says no added sugars for children age 2 and under. Soft, cooked foods need to be cut into shapes about the size of an adult’s pinky finger and smaller pieces of food - like most cereals are - represent a choking hazard early on. SMALL SIZE FOOD DOESN’T FLY - early on in BLW we don’t feed babies small pieces of food. While older babies can easily pick up small foods like Cheerios, they are not an ideal first food because babies can’t pick them up to self-feed. PINCER GRASP PROBLEMS - babies don’t develop their pincer grasp until a few months after starting solids. Some limitations to cereals for babies include: I get a lot of questions about whether or not babies can safely eat cereal.Īs a specialist in baby-led weaning, I definitely promote the idea that babies can eat WAY more foods than we often give them credit for.but they can’t eat all foods. What it comes down to is: there just isn’t room for so much sugar at breakfast! and of course that’s before they get plied with sugary snacks at every school event or sports function and birthday parties and treats and it goes on and on…

If a serving of kids’ cereal has 12 grams of added sugar and most kids will eat about 2 servings worth in a sitting, that is 100% of their daily sugar allotment at breakfast. No added sugars for children age 2 and under We should limit sugar to no more than 25 g (6 teaspoons) per day for age 2+ Sugar makes up about 17% of kids’ calories The American Academy of Pediatrics reminds us that: Sugar in cereals is a problem because there are too many other places in the kids’ diet where sugar is also hanging out. Point is: in our house at least, sugary foods like sugary cereals are a “sometimes food”.įor my family - if and when we eat sugar, it’s not going to be all the time and I definitely prefer not to start my kids’ day out by loading them up with refined sugars. Other times my grandmother would treat us to Honey Nut Cheerios when we stayed at her house.a HUGE departure from the boring box of yellow Cheerios we ate most other days. I remember it being a HUGE treat to have a super sugary cereal. On Father’s Day though, my mom always bought a big box of Sugar Smacks for my dad, which he then graciously shared with us. My own mom is a dietitian and we had probably max 5 different cereals to choose from over the course of my childhood (.and we even lived to tell about it!! 😆)

Wic approved hot cereal