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low salt staples for BLW
In terms of bread products, margerine, cheese etc are there particular brands that you buy, or do you seek out specific low-salt varieties?
The BLW book i've been reading says hummus is good for dipping/spreading on toast etc. Do i have to make my own or are shop versions ok?
What other store bought staples do you buy?
Sorry if these seem stupid questions - we'll be starting in a week or so and i really want to get it right!
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I used unsalted butter, but didn't bother too much about cheese or bread, just didn't give in big quantities.
I did make hummus but it could be frozen in small portions
Snacks we used fruit fingers, veg sticks, Rice cakes. Used the fruit purée pots in the baby food section as a dip. Natural yogurt is a good dip for fruit too.
Apart from that we just did our normal meals but didn't add salt to them during cooking. We'd do things like fajitas and just fry a portion of meat/veg for M in a small frying pan without spices.
Main tip with blw is don't get stressed if she doesnt eat loads straight away, sometimes they get a few months to get it
We made unsalted bread as white sliced is massively high in salt (1 medium slice of white is 0.5g of salt and the allowance for under 1's is 1g) so it's a massive portion of their salt just on the bread. Because we did that, I didn't worry so much about salt in other things, and we don't use salt in cooking.
I found the whole slat thing a pain because once disco got eating he has eaten relatively large portions so if he has a sandwhich then it was 2 slices of bread pluss filling and that was the days total salt allowance.
We buy unsalted butter for spreading on things and make our own shortcrust pastry using it so its salt free.
If you are feeding part of your meal then make sure non if the ingredients contain salt stock is high in salt we eiether made our own or used baby stock and added salt to ours once we had dished up if needed.
Shop brough hommous has salt so again think about what else baby is eating in the day or make your own and freeze. If givig crumpet check all the brands the supermarket has we found the amount of salt in products varied alot beteween brands.
Breadsticks again supermarket own brand low in salt different brand high in salt.
We made lots of thithick soups and dipped a crumpet or steamed veg.
apart from that be prepaired for the mess its lots of fun but very messy
Ok, i'll pay more attention to salt content of anything i buy instore... stupid question...but how do i know if it's high salt? I've never been one for reading labels. Is there a figure per 100g it should be below? Baby's allowance is 1g per day?
We don't use salt in cooking anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem. Are there any foods that are high in salt that suprised you/might not be so obvious?
I'm definately prepared for the mess amd pretty laid back about how long it'll take for her to get the hang of it, so hopefully it'll just be a bit of fun and no stress!
Anything processed is high in salt. Cheese is bad, as is shop bread. then the obvious suspects like ham. Breakfast cereals can have added salt (and lots of sugar too).
Best thing to do is to cook from scratch if you can. Get creative with herbs and spices, use baby stock cubes or extra low salt ones. Homemade houmous is SO easy it's untrue. Batch cook and freeze in portions so you can defrost when needed - things like veg nuggets/muffins etc will defrost by lunchtime if you get them out at breakfast.
Don't stress too much about it - BLW can actually be quite fun. Start off with sticks of fruit and veg and work your way up from there. The BLW cookbook is ace - the meatloaf is scrumptious!
Check out www.babyledweaning.com for recipe ideas too x
What sofa leopard said re salt in cheese etc
another one to watch out for is smoked fish
rather than looking per 100g we worked out what it would be per portion tesco would be eating so if he ate 1 crumpet that was 0.5 ishg of salt.
watch out for things like tinned baked beans even low salt have a reasonable amount of salt in we just avoided processed food as much as possible and cooked from scratch although we are by no means fanatical about cooking from scratch if he has something like fish fingers for a meal then I would avoid salt for the rest of the day.
porriage, shreddie wheat and home made pancakes are good no salt breakfasts, also yoghurt and fruit puree give baby pre loaded spoon (better a few weeks in than right at the start)
You can get baby friendly stock cubes from Boots and the Heinz range. When we cook our dinners, we leave the salt out until we've served the kids' meals, then we add it to our own.