How often can I give Ragi, Dry Fruits or Jaggery to my baby?

On our blog, I regularly post recipes inclusive of a varied variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, millets, pulses, and whatnot. I strive hard to bring in this balance by exploring a lot of benefits of each ingredient. I’m happy and proud that I’ve been able to share more than 200 babies’ and kids’ food recipes here and help my audience understand the importance of each food.
However there is still a huge gap and community of people who feed repetitive food to their younger children assuming it is healthy, some think that it’s the best way to help them grow and some just are scared to experiment. You must have known that babies are offered Ragi porridge on a daily basis or at max mashed rice with some vegetables. Also, any time I post any recipe I get questions, Can I give this daily? How many times a week can I offer this food? Etc. This article will help you understand why it is dangerous to repeat just one or two food for babies and kids.
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1. Nutritional Deficiencies and Nutritional Over dosage
A restrictive diet leads to nutritional deficiencies and lifestyle diseases – obesity, heart disease, weakened bones, etc. Even the foods that are healthiest and good for us can cause discomfort if consumed in excess. The most famous one-liner on this channel is, “Ragi is rich in calcium but what about other nutrients your body needs?” Your body will overdose with one nutrient when repeated more often, leading to certain side effects and there are chances of toxicity with this. This can hamper your child’s overall growth for sure.
2. Digestive Issues
A healthy diet inclusive of a variety of foods provides the environment the gut needs to grow the healthy bacteria to boost immunity and improve digestion. When one loads up with a single food or repetitive diet for example Ragi, the bacteria that favor the nutrients from Ragi will increase while wiping out the bacteria that may love other millets, grains, vegetables, and even fruits. So when your child eats other foods next time she will feel bloated, suffer from indigestion, acidic reflux, diarrhea, or heartburn.
Buy our Organic Jaggery Powder, Dry Fruits Powder, and Sprouted Ragi Powder at our website.
3. Low Immunity
A balanced diet inclusive of a varied variety of food offers complete nutrition to one’s body. This is needed for boosting immunity which helps babies and kids to fight infections and grow healthy naturally. When they are in the womb placenta takes care of it, post-birth breastfeeding takes care of it and later a proper diet is needed to ensure the babies’ or kid’s immunity is strong. Highly limited food intake will surely damage their immunity with a lack of varied nutrients in the body.
4. Food Hatred, Eating Disorder & Weight Loss
Over a period of time when you feed your child the same food, it can create boredom and hatred towards food. A condition called selective eating disorder can be developed when one rejects foods of other colors, textures, or smells. This in children can lead to weight loss or malnutrition.
Before closing, I would like to insist to include Rainbow food in your’s and your child’s diet. A colorful combination of fruits, vegetables, pulses, and whole grains ensures complete nutrition and you would not miss out on any phytochemicals helping regulate hormones, protect cells and DNA from damage that may lead to cancer. Along with it add fermented foods like idli/dosa, buttermilk, Ragi ambli, etc with probiotics that take care of your child’s gut health or digestive health.
If you are offering repetitive food to your child, let us start with a few things now.
1. Get over the guilt this video has given you. Better late than never, to start healthy habits.
2. Start including one new food in your child’s food every alternate day.
3. Plan for weekly menu and intake of all healthy nutrients, as the daily calculation can be stressful and not needed too. Ex: if your child is a year old and requires 10 grams of protein per day, then calculate at an inclusion total per week and not per day. This is because with babies it is difficult to have daily calculations due to unavoidable circumstances we all are aware of.
Video: How often can I give Ragi, Dry Fruits, or Jaggery to my baby?
https://youtu.be/Q4Uy6iN8GUE
- Video in Hindi – क्या हर रोज़ बच्चे को दलिया, ड्राई फ्रूट्स, गुड़ दे सकते हैं?
- Video in Kannada – ಮಗುವಿಗೆ ದಿನಾಗಲೂ ರಾಗಿ, ಡ್ರೈ ಫ್ರೂಟ್ಸ್, ಬೆಲ್ಲ ಕೊಡಬಹುದೇ?
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