Infant Nutritional Therapist Alice Fotheringham provides easy ways to include vegetables into your baby’s diet
With increasing reports about babies needing to experience genuine vegetable flavours (not just veg/fruit blends) from their earliest food tastes, Alice Fotheringham, Infant Nutritional Therapist at Piccolo, says that getting the whole family involved is key.
Packing a variety of greens into your little one’s diet is a great way to up your whole family’s intake. Many nutritionists and researchers actually believe that we should be aiming higher than the five a day mantra – here are some ways to help:
Batch roast vegetables: Line a roasting dish with foil, cut several sweet potato, carrot and parsnip into long batons (as many as you can fit into a roasting dish). Drizzle over a generous glug of olive oil, and sprinkle over a couple of teaspoons of dried or fresh herbs such as rosemary, thyme or sage. Roast for 35 mins on 180C. Perfect with a meal or as finger food snack. They last several days in the fridge and can be added to most meals and enjoyed by everyone.
Dip it. Not only are raw veg cut into batons served with dips a great and fun way to give vegetables to your family (and good to add to the grown up lunch box as well), don’t miss a trick and add more vegetables to the dip itself. Whizz a cooked beetroot or olives into shop bought hummus, or puree cooked peas and spinach into cream cheese for a green dip.
Put vegetables into a small bowl as a ‘starter’ while you get the rest of the food ready. Even some cut carrots and cucumber or steamed broccoli. Everything is more appealing when it’s in a small bowl, even for us.
Quick veg and egg packed meals: omelettes, frittatas and fritters are all quick one pan dishes that can be whipped up using frozen, canned or grated veg like sweetcorn, peas, courgette or carrot mixed with egg and a little cheese.
Launching exclusively in Waitrose this week the flavours include: ‘Carrot & Sweet Potato with a hint of parsley’ and ‘Pea, Courgette, Leek with a hint of mint’ – a sure fire way to get your little ones loving vegetables. £1.20
