Why the Right Food Matters The Importance of Diet for Babies Think back to all that you did to prepare for your baby during pregnancy. You probably bought cute new clothes to keep baby stylish and warm, and washed them in special laundry detergent to make sure they wouldn''t irritate that new baby skin. You probably decorated a nursery and bought toys to stimulate baby''s little growing brain. You also likely bought a car seat (and maybe even a family-size car--hello, minivan!), high chair, and other equipment t make sure baby is always safe and secure. I remember spending hours reading reviews and safety information on products to ensure that my babies were going to be safe and that I was making the best decisions about which items to use for them. When your baby was first born, you probably made sure everyone washed their hands before touching your infant, and you told people who were sick to stay far, far away. You sterilized bottles and pacifiers. You breastfed baby or diligently prepared formula bottles.

You did all of this, and much more, to keep baby safe and healthy. As parents, we have gladly taken, and will continue to take, all precautions to ensure that our child is safe and healthy. But what if I told you that most of us don''t really give much thought to one of the most important things that we can do to keep baby healthy now and throughout their life--providing nutritious food? When It''s Time for Baby to Start Eating Solid Foods, What Should You Provide? This might seem like a silly question to ponder. You feed babies baby food, right? It''s fuel--calories they need to grow bigger. Well, science has revealed that it isn''t quite that simple. First, we all know that our food landscape has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. We have become a society with foods that are genetically modified, doused with fertilizers and insecticides, and highly processed. These changes in our food environment have been blamed for causing not only some cancers and obesity, but also other childhood disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and even autism (more on these topics in chapter 8).

Also, we have learned so much in recent years about how what we eat, especially at certain developmental periods in life, can not only influence behavior but also lead to lasting changes to the brain and body. New research exploring how food intake during early stages of life may impact a child''s health and development has helped us to more seriously consider what we feed our babies in order to promote optimal health now and for the rest of their lives. You Are What You Eat Most of the recent headline-grabbing research on early-life nutrition has focused on obesity. In the past 30 years, childhood obesity in the United States has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents. The percentage of U.S. children aged 6 to 11 years who are obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 18 percent in 2012. In 2012, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.

While lack of exercise has been implicated as one contributing factor in this outcome, the bigger culprit is diet. Studies show that, on average, kids (like adults) eat more processed foods than unprocessed foods, and processed foods are high in added fats and sugars. This lifestyle can lead to habits that are hard to break and food preferences that become engrained into adulthood. Obesity later on is certainly a concern when thinking about what foods to offer your baby, but there are many other reasons why what babies eat is important for their health. Every week there seems to be breaking news about some food additive or ingredient that has been linked to the development of food poisoning, food allergies, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and so on. Parents wonder, Is this real or just media hype? Will my kid get cancer from the nitrates in the hot dog I fed him? Was there BPA in that can of soup I heated up for my toddler for lunch? Will my child be addicted to sugar because I bribed him with M&M''s to sit on the potty? These are just a handful of the anxiety-provoking questions that parents have about food--and that''s not even considering the general challenge of just getting a baby to eat. This confusion in the media and lack of science-based advice was a major motivation for me to write this book. With mounting evidence of the need for good nutrition early in life, and with the questions and angst that can come with feeding an infant or toddler, it is essential that parents have a realistic, accessible, and hype-free resource to explain the new scientific findings in this area.

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