Homemade Baby: Smart Eating for Smart Brains

Confucius said a lot of smart things in his day. But I’ll bet if he’d spent any time as a mother, he’d have also said: “A happy baby is a happy mommy.”

Look around any airport or mall, and you can see the relationship between what children eat and how they behave and learn. Chances are, the child dangling from the light fixture ate too many swizzle sticks and malt balls.

Studies show that the relationship between behavior and learning begins with the brain. A baby’s brain triples in size by the first birthday. Since the baby’s bloodstream feeds its nutrients first to the most vital organs, the brain gets the first helpings. Mozart might help, but a developing brain craves three types of foods:

Mood Foods

The brain uses 20% of the body’s carbohydrate supply. That affects behavior and learning. Foods that contain sugars (complex carbohydrates) released into the bloodstream at a slow and steady pace are:

Cereal and grains like oatmeal and brown rice.
Fresh fruits like apples and oranges (fruit juices don’t provide the necessary fiber needed to release sugar over a sustained period of time)
Veggies and Legumes, like sweet potato and lentils.
Dairy products, like milk or yogurt (but beware of the added sugar in many flavored yogurts)

Smart Foods

Proteins are necessary for brain development, because their amino acids help your baby’s brain build neurotransmitters that carry messages from one brain cell to another – literally, the firing pistons in the brain’s engine. From birth to six months, the average baby requires 13 grams of protein daily.

Breast milk and/or formula is the perfect choice.
Older babies can incorporate seafood, soy products (watch for allergies), meat & eggs

Fat is good (really!)

The baby’s brain is 60% fat and it uses 60% of the total energy consumed by the infant. The right kind of fat is important too: Breast milk is rich in brain building fats such as DHA and Omega-3 fats. Other food sources include:

Green leafy veggies
Flax seed oil
Salmon

Your choices in the foods you give your baby have never been more important. Selecting Certified Organic foods to feed to your baby’s brain at this most vulnerable time in its development have immense benefits throughout your child’s life. This includes:

Lowering your baby’s risk of allergies or asthma
Decreasing exposure to toxic chemicals.
Infants’ diets are usually restricted to a small range of foods in concentrated amounts, which puts them at a higher risk for toxic exposure.

Here are some of the foods that help to build your baby’s brain:

Broccoli Avocados Cantaloupe Cheese Brewer’s Yeast
Eggs Peas Spinach Brown rice Asparagus
Legumes Oatmeal Yogurt Bananas

How food affects a baby’s mood and growth varies from child to child, but if you understand how foods affect the body, you can make wise choices for both you and your family.