Baby Food Suggestions

Whole-grain kokkoh cereal can be introduced after 8 months to 1 year as main food. It is made from four parts brown rice (short grain), 3 parts sweet brown rice, 1 part barley, always cooked with a piece of kombu, (which does not always have to be eaten). The proportion of water to grains is about 10:1, 7:1, or 3:1, depending upon the age of the baby. (Younger babies require more water.) Millet and oats can be included from time to time. Buckwheat, wheat, and rye are usually not given.

This cereal should be soft and creamy. For babies less than 5 months old, kokkoh is best digested if mashed well (preferably in a suribachi or with a mortar and pestle). For babies less than 1 year old, rice syrup or barley malt may be added as a sweetener. Avoid kokkoh or other creamy grain cereals made from flour products. Kokkoh can be given as a replacement for mother’s milk if mother’s milk is not available.

Soup can be introduced after 5 months. Contents of vegetables and wakame or kombu seaweed may be given after well mashed in creamy form. No salt, miso, or tamari is added before 10 months old; thereafter, a slightly salty taste may be used for flavoring.

Vegetables can be introduced after 5–7 months, usually when teeth come in and grains have been given for 1 month. When introducing vegetables to children, start by giving sweet vegetables, boiled or steamed, but cooked well and mashed ( e.g., carrots, cabbage, squash, onions, daikon, chinese cabbage). Because it is usually difficult for children to eat greens, special effort should be made to make sure they eat them. (They may prefer sweet greens like kale and broccoli to watercress and mustard greens.) Very mild macrobiotic seasonings may be added to vegetables after 10 months.

Beans can be introduced after 8 months, but only small amounts of aduki, lentils, or chickpeas, cooked with kombu seaweed and mashed well.

Sea vegetables can be introduced after 1 1/2–2 years, although grains should always be cooked with kombu, and vegetables can be cooked with seaweed ( the seaweed need not be eaten).

Beverages include spring or well water boiled and cooled, bancha twig tea, cereal grain teas, apple juice warmed or hot, and amasake ( boiled with twice as much water and cooled).

Fruit and fish should be given to infants only when recommended in a particular case. Fruit, cooked and mashed, can be introduced after 1 1/2–2 years of age.

Quick, light pickles may be introduced after 2–3 years of age.

Age 4: Standard diet with mild salt, miso, seasonings, etc. (Fish is not at all necessary to give at this age.) Babies and infants should not have any fish or ginger. The taste that nourishes babies and children the most is the sweet taste.