Iron and Baby Food

[sophie]

Hi everyone.
My little boy (nearly 7 months, time is flyyyyyying) has recently started on solids. So far all he's eating is rice cereal, and kumara (New Zealand sweet potato) and spinach puree. I know all the reccommendations say to feed babies iron-fortified rice cereal, but I use organic cereals which don't come fortified. With my other two children, I added molasses for iron, but my daughter turned out to be intolerant to sugar (including molasses) so I want to avoid this as yet. Anyone have any ideas?

[Fiona]

I found this a tricky one at first, because a lot of iron rich foods aren't suitable for the early stages of weaning. Anyway, my son is 7 and a half months, and has been on solids for a while now, and I've recently introduced him to lentils and also dried (unsulphured) apricots which I steam and then puree. It's quite a rich mixture, so I give it to him in small quantities, or mixed with other fruits or cereal.

Hope that's helpful.

Fiona

[jewels]

quinoa is a good source of iron.

[frenchie]

Earth's Best is iron fortified rice cereal. you might be able to order some online. It is organic as well.

[sophie]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to try quinoa cereal with barley malt, hope it does the trick! I'll keep a look out for the earths best too, as we can get the earths best baby food and teething biscuits.

[Fiona]

Strangely baby cereal in this country doesn't seem to be fortified with iron, although they all seem to have added B1. Most non baby cereal has iron added, but I haven't found anything which doesn't contain salt and sugar.


Fiona