Читать книгу Eat Up: Food for Children of All Ages - Mark Hix - Страница 23

Babies should not have any added salt until they are one year old, because their kidneys are too immature to cope with it. After a year, try and keep salt to a minimum in their diet. When cooking a family meal you can do this by taking out your child’s portion before adding seasoning, if practical. Salt is added to many commercially processed foods such as crisps and other pre-salted snack foods, and stock cubes, so be careful that you aren’t giving your child salt unintentionally by including these foods in their diet, and always check the labels of any processed food you buy.

Although some first foods such as baby rice and purées may taste bland to an adult palate, remember that your baby is tasting them for the first time, and their flavour will be very strong compared to the milk they are used to. British adults consume about 9g of salt per day when the recommended maximum is 6g, so getting the whole family to cut down is not a bad idea. It’s up to you whether you use salt when cooking recipes from this book. Some of them will definitely need seasoning (unless you are giving them to a child under one, of course), whereas you might find with others that you can get away without any salt at all. It is always better to confine the salt to cooking than adding it later to the plate.