The baby at the age of seven months leads an active lifestyle, knows how to sit, tries to crawl. His diet continues to replenish with new products. What should a child eat at 7 months for the growing body to receive all the necessary nutrients? What dishes can diversify its menu, and how to cook them? This will be discussed further.
Recommended meals for a seven month old baby
The child at seven months old has already grown up, he got acquainted with new products and is used to many, he has a full breakfast and lunch. At this age, the yolk of a chicken egg is introduced into the diet, which contains fat, vitamin A, B12, selenium and phosphorus. It is crumbled and added to mashed potatoes or porridge. In addition, the child is given low-fat minced meat and crackers from dried bread or baby cookies.
And fruit juice or mashed potatoes increase to 70 g. What should a child eat at 7 months? An approximate diet of a baby at this age who is breastfeeding consists of five meals a day:
- Awakening time is breast milk.
- Breakfast - milk-free porridge (150 g) with the addition of ½ boiled egg yolk and half a teaspoon of butter. Feeding with breast milk.
- Lunch - mashed potatoes or soup from vegetables with meat (170 g) and with vegetable oil (0.5 teaspoons), fruit juice (50 g).
- Afternoon snack - fruit puree (70 g) with biscuits or cottage cheese (30 g), compote (50 g), breast milk.
- Dinner is breast milk.
This diet provides the complete need of the baby for normal growth and development.
Soup for a seven month old baby
Soups are introduced into the baby's diet at 7 months. The very first to usually boil a light puree soup of vegetables. It is better to cook it with bottled drinking water for children. For cooking, use various vegetables that are easily absorbed by the child's body and contain a large amount of vitamins and minerals. These include:
- cauliflower;
- broccoli;
- carrot;
- potatoes;
- zucchini;
- pumpkin;
- onion.
The composition of the dish includes simultaneously 2-3 types of vegetables from the listed list. Before use, all ingredients should be thoroughly rinsed with running water, chopped and placed in a pot or double boiler. Then add a small amount of water and cook until tender. Remove the cooked vegetables from the pan, grind on a blender and add the vegetable broth in which they were cooked to the resulting mass. By thickness, the soup should resemble kefir or liquid sour cream, it is not recommended to add salt to it. Later on, rice, buckwheat, oatmeal, and meat puree from a jar for baby food are added to the soup. And by the end of the seventh month, the baby is put in a soup separately cooked lean meat of poultry or veal, chopped on a blender or passed through a meat grinder. It must be remembered that it must be cooked daily in quantities of one serving.
How to cook the first dish?
Consider a soup recipe for a 7 month old baby. For one serving of vegetable soup is taken:
- water - 200 ml;
- potatoes - 100 g;
- carrots - 50 g;
- onion - 10 g.
Peel vegetables, rinse with running water, cut. Boil water and put the necessary products into the pan, close the lid and cook until cooked. Grind all vegetables with a blender or wipe using a sieve, lower into broth and bring to a boil. Before feeding, add about half a teaspoon of butter or vegetable oil.
Dried fruits for compote
Compotes are introduced into the diet of a child at 7 months or at six months of age, if he is breast-fed. Children who do not receive breast milk begin to try compotes for one to two months earlier. The most useful dried fruits for such a drink are:
- apples - the first place is occupied by the iron content;
- pears - leading in the content of vitamin C;
- dried apricots - a source of vitamin A;
- prunes - composed of many different organic acids;
- raisins - vitamin B1 predominates.
Some dried fruits can cause an allergic reaction in babies, so you need to introduce complementary foods with their content gradually, in small portions. The very first dry fruit from which compote is made is an apple. This is an affordable product and you can completely dry it yourself. When choosing other dried fruits, you should not take soft or, on the contrary, hard fruits, as well as very bright, evenly colored and oily, as in these cases it is likely that the manufacturer violated the drying rules or used chemicals to improve the appearance.
How to cook dried fruit compote?
The recipes that exist are similar to each other. There is one general rule that must be followed in order to cook baby compote of dried fruits. For this:
- Select all intact fruits.
- Rinse thoroughly several times with water.
- Soak in warm boiled water for a quarter of an hour.
- Boil the required volume of water in a saucepan. Dried fruits during cooking increase in volume, so 500 ml of liquid is taken for 50 g of raw materials.
- Pour prepared fruit and bring to a boil, but do not boil, so that all the substances useful in them are preserved.
- Close the pan tightly with a lid and let it brew for an hour.
Cool compote to cool to 37 degrees and you can give the baby. Now you know how to cook dried fruit compote. The recipe is very simple.
Apple compote
Compote, which is first given to the baby, is boiled from dried apples alone:
- Take them no more than 20 g.
- Rinse thoroughly.
- Soak in warm boiled water for 15 minutes.
- Boil 200 ml of water in a saucepan and cover the cooked fruit.
- Bring water to a boil and turn off.
- Leave to infuse in a closed pan for an hour.
- Cool and drink the baby.
In subsequent times, compote is cooked not only from dry apples, but combine them with other types of dried fruits.
Curd for feeding
And what else can you give to your baby at 7 months old? The kid has already grown up by this time, he gradually begins to eat all the foods that adults eat. Moreover, his first teeth appear, and he makes his first attempts to crawl. Just at this time, the child needs calcium and phosphorus for healthy teeth and strong bones. Therefore, from seven months of age, cottage cheese is introduced into the lure of the child. In addition to phosphorus and potassium, so necessary for the baby, the curd contains a high concentration of milk protein, which fully compensates for its animal counterpart.
Due to the amino acids present in the protein, the B vitamins contained in the product are easily absorbed by the child's body. Therefore, curd products contribute to its healthy growth. Despite the usefulness of cottage cheese, children of seven months are advised to eat half to a full teaspoon of this product per day.
Cooking cottage cheese at home
On the shelves of shops there is a wide variety of different curd products: traditional, low-fat, granular and in the form of curd mass with various fillers and additives. But for a small child, it is better to cook this product with their own hands to guarantee its quality. How to cook homemade cottage cheese for a child? There are several recipes for this:
- Children’s. In the evening, put milk in a warm place for souring. In the morning, warm it in a water bath until completely folding. Remove from the stove and drop into a colander, with gauze spread out inside. Tie in a knot and hang over the pan. As soon as all whey drains, the curd is ready for use.
- Calcined. In the pharmacy network, purchase a 10% solution of "calcium chloride" in advance. Boil half a liter of milk, allow to cool to 40 degrees. Add to it, continuously stirring, 1.5 tbsp. l calcium chloride. After coagulation of milk, strain and the curd is ready.
- From milk and kefir. Bring 200 ml of milk to a boil, pour the same amount of kefir into it, leave for a quarter of an hour, drain the whey and homemade cottage cheese is ready for use.
There are also many more different recipes for preparing a gentle and nutritious product for babies, which you can easily find on the Internet.
Vegetable Puree
What should a child eat at 7 months? Nutrition for infants is introduced after they have performed six months, so at seven months the baby is not only familiar with vegetable puree, but it already replaces completely one breastfeeding. To prepare this dish you need:
- choose fresh and quality vegetables;
- wash thoroughly;
- to clear;
- rinse again;
- cook in a small amount of water or steamed;
- boil the products until they reach softness;
- grind in a blender or rub through a sieve.
Half the teaspoon of breast milk, olive oil or vegetable broth is added to the finished dish. Feed the baby after the mash has cooled.
How to make mashed potatoes?
Below are two recipes for mashed vegetables for children from:
- Carrots Wash small vegetables well, peel and cut into small pieces. Put in boiling water and cook until cooked. Rub through a sieve, add a tablespoon of breast milk, half a teaspoon of butter, mix and mash ready.
- Zucchini. From the washed small-sized vegetable, cut two circles, peel, cut into cubes and lower in boiling water. Grind the zucchini cooked until tender, using a blender, add a little breast milk and half a teaspoon of olive oil. Ready mashed potatoes to feed the baby.
Young children usually like mashed potatoes from various vegetables, and they enjoy eating them.
Feeding baby porridge
What should a child eat at 7 months? Of course, porridge. They are indispensable for baby food. The composition of cereals includes a lot of carbohydrates, trace elements and vegetable protein. Having a high energy value, they contribute to the growth and weight gain of the crumbs. Complementary feeding with cereals begins after the child has become accustomed to vegetable puree. But with poor weight gain, frequent regurgitation and unstable stools, sometimes they are recommended to give forward vegetable dishes. The baby begins to taste porridge from six months of age. They should be boiled in water and consist of one cereal: rice, buckwheat or corn.
At 6.5 months, the child eats porridge from the two cereals listed above, and a new cereal, oatmeal, is introduced into the cereals for the child of 7 months. Further in one dish it is allowed to combine up to three cereals. At the age of seven months, the child can eat a portion of porridge up to 170 grams. Doctors do not recommend adding salt and sugar to this dish. You can breastfeed a baby with a breast or a mixture so that he receives a full volume of food.
Features of nutrition of a seven-month-old baby on artificial feeding
By this age, a child’s diet is similar to that of an adult. The kid has a full breakfast and lunch, as well as a light dinner. The menu of a 7-month-old baby on artificial feeding looks something like this:
- Post-awakening feeding consists of a milk mixture.
- Breakfast - porridge (150 g) and fruit puree (70 g).
- Lunch - soup or mashed potatoes with meat (180 g), half chicken yolk, fruit juice (30 g).
- Snack - cottage cheese (30 g), vegetable puree (100 g). Fruit puree or compote (70 g), cookies (1 pc).
- Dinner - milk formula.
For a balanced diet, chicken yolk and poultry, rabbit and veal meat are introduced. Five times a day, the baby is fed with milk formula.
Conclusion
The digestive system at the age of seven months still remains imperfect, so it is necessary to introduce new products carefully, starting with a small amount. If your child doesn’t like unfamiliar dishes, you can add breast milk or a milk mixture to them. A familiar taste will cause him loyalty to new food. In addition, you must adhere to the diet.