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Most nutritious Baby Food on Earth

 
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twoblink



Joined: 17 Feb 2010
Posts: 16

PostPosted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 2:55 am    Post subject: Most nutritious Baby Food on Earth Reply with quote

My baby is now 18+ months old; and she's been drinking this stuff since she was 6 months old, so it's not an untested recipe; this is what she drinks daily.

Background:

When my wife and I had a baby; we went the breast feeding route; but all along, I knew the day would come when we'd have to supplement her diet with something. So I searched high and low; and couldn't find anything to my satisfaction; and so I started tinkering on my own.

My goals were simple:

1) Simple to prepare
2) Most nutritious stuff on earth


I scoured the internet; and didn't find anything, and so I made my own. I thought it high time I shared the recipe. I'm a verbose person who types fast; so you will get a fairly long recipe; the ingredients are simple as are the instructions, but I am a nerd so I generally like to understand the thinking behind decisions, as well as the reasons for the inclusion of the ingredients.

I will list the recipe first, and then I will give a detailed explanation below.

DISCLAIMER: I make this for my baby; but I can't guarantee that your baby won't be allergic to it; so you have been warned!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Kefir/Quinoa/Salba Babyfood Recipe


Ingredients:

3 cups of cooked Quinoa
1 Bottle of Goat Kefir (I use Redwood Hill Farm Plain Goat Kefir)
2 Tablespoons of Salba Seeds
2 drops of Vitamin D

Directions:

Cook Quinoa according to the directions on the bag. If you have a rice cooker, put it on "porridge" setting and cook it in there, super easy. The ratio we use is 1 cup of Quinoa to 4 cups of water.

After the Quinoa is cooked, let it cool to room temp. Cook extra if you'd like, and store the extra in a closed container in the frig. It will last about a week undisturbed.

Place 3 cups of cooked Quinoa into a blender
Make sure the Blender container is fairly big
Pour about half a bottle of the Goat Kefir into the blender
Scoop 2 Tablespoons of Salba seeds into the blender
Blend for 30 seconds on high
Drop 2 drops of children's vitamin D in
Pour the remaining Kefir into the blender
Blend for another 30 seconds

All done! It should be thick like a smoothie.
Pour the contents back into the bottle.

Keep in mind that kefir will KEEP FERMENTING when it gets warm, so try not to let it get warm or else it will sour (sour more). When you are on the go, keep the bottle in an insulated sleeve so it doesn't warm up.


~~~~~~~~~~~ The Explanation ~~~~~~~~~~~~

When my daughter first started on solid food; we did what the pediatrician said; we started out with rice cereal. She got so constipated from it, we had to get her off of it. We then switched to a oat based cereal, better, but not "great". So we were looking for something else.

I decided early on that my baby was to have NO MILK pretty much most of her life. (Aside from breast milk that is). Being Asian, the chances of my daughter being lactose intolerant is like 80%, and also, I actually am not a believer in milk. I don't believe that it gives you calcium, and I don't believe it's as good for you as the milk counsel would like you to believe. I however, wanted something liquid so my baby can drink her way to health; instead of eating her way to health.

I considered soy, which has its own issues. But my conclusion was, she would drink kefir or yogurt. Kefir is basically yogurt; milk with good bacteria in it; and as is such, it has no lactose in it, so I wouldn't have to deal with lactose intolerance. Kefir is also more nutritious than the milk it started out with; because all the little microorganisms have done the digesting and conversion. So I started out with Kefir as my base ingredient. I make my own; but the quantity my daughter drinks, I couldn't keep up, and fermentation consistency was difficult to regulate; and so I ended up deciding that I would purchase my kefir instead of making it. I had a selection to choose from; why goat kefir instead of regular kefir? Glad you asked.

2 reasons I picked goat kefir over regular (cow milk) kefir.

1) Goat milk in and of itself, have smaller fat globuals (sp??) and is easier to digest than regular milk. So I assume that carries over to kefir.
2) Calories. My daughter is fairly small, and moves around like a humming bird, and so I wanted to get as many calories in her as possible. Goat Kefir was calorically much higher than cowmilk based kefir.

Shopping at Wholefoods; the brand I ended up purchasing was Redwood Hill Farms, Plain Goat Kefir.

http://www.redwoodhill.com/kefir-milk/health-benefits-of-goat-milk-kefir



You can read about the benefits of goat kefir from their website.
One of the benefits of kefir is that it has a "calming effect".. which is music to a parent's ear.

So now we had our base ingredient, onto the next item.

I wanted something with fiber that would be filling so they wouldn't just drink and pee all day long, and would feel full. So I searched for a grain that was nutritious. I originally settled on millets; I graduated from Cal Poly Pomona, the campus was donated to the state by the late Mr. Kellogg, of the breakfast cereals fame. What struck me at the time was, when asked what HE ate for breakfast, he said "Millets, the king of grains". The problem with Millets was that it was difficult to cook; it required soaking almost overnight, and was a mess to cook. So I started looking for something that was nutritionally equivalent or denser than Millet, but much easier to cook. I could not find a grain that was as good as millet. But my search lead me to some ancient grains, of which I found out weren't grains at all. In reading up, the grain that intrigued me (which I later on found out was actually a grass) was Quinoa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa



Nutritionally denser than Millet; it was a grass and easy to cook. From one of the websites: [Quinoa contains more protein than any other grain; an average of 16.2 percent, compared with 7.5 percent for rice, 9.9 percent for millet, and 14 percent for wheat. Some varieties of quinoa are more than 20 percent protein. ]

So I bought a bag of Quinoa; and tried it out. My wife thought it smelled funky, but I didn't care, as long as my daughter was going to eat it. One of the side benefits of Quinoa is that it contains a COMPLETE amino acid set. There are very very few grains that are. So Quinoa became the 2nd ingredient in my babyfood mix.

So I started to read up on DHA and how your baby's brain development was heavily dependent on it; and I didn't want a retarded baby, and so I bought some fish oil for her to eat. The problem with fish oil was.. it smelled like fish oil. I tried to sneak it into her food, but it was a no-go. I assume it tasted like it smelled.. So she wasn't all that happy with it.

So I started to research what was high in the Omega family of fatty acids. I stumbled onto a crazy product. Another one of the ancient grains, "Chia" was also like Quinoa; and highly nutritious; they were mostly black seeds; with a few "super" seeds in there, and the super seeds were white. So some dudes somewhere decided that they would cross breed all the white seeds until it ONLY produced super white seeds. They did this for years and years, and finally, the Super white seeded Chia's, were commercially named "Salba". It is the most nutritionally dense food item on earth. Considered to be natures perfect food; it had more Omega 3 and Omega 6 than Salmon!

http://www.salbasmart.com/products-grain.html




Click the link below if you want to see the nutritional content of Salba. Quite amazing actually.

http://www.nutritiongeeks.com/salba-seed-whole-16/salba-seed-whole.html



So Salba became the 3rd ingredient in recipe.

My baby had difficulty sleeping through the winter months; and we didn't know why, until a little research and we found out that most babies lacked vitamin D. (especially those on breast milk) So that is the 4th ingredient in the mix. We now no longer put vitamin D in the mix; she's old enough to chew so we give her vitamin D gummy bears; which she prefers. But no matter what; vitamin D should be part of your infants diet.

Conclusion:


Kefir: is nutritionally dense; filled with friendly flora which helps digestion, absorption, and fights disease as well as regulates bowel movement and fights constipation. It doesn't matter to me if you believe or not; but most most holistic doctors believe that allergies is directly related to how much friendly flora you have in your stomach during pregnancy.

Quinoa: One of the most nutritionally dense foods on earth; high fiber content; easy to cook, complete amino acid set.

Salba: THE most nutritionally dense food item on earth; high in fatty acids to help with brain development.

Vitamin D: Helps calcium absorption and processing and a whole host of stuff to numerous to mention. But most importantly for parents, it helps your baby GO TO SLEEP AND STAY ASLEEP.


So there you have it; my daughter drinks about a bottle and a half of this stuff every day; we order a case of goat kefir (6 in a case, 10% discount when you order a case at Wholefoods) once every 4 days.

I personally do not know of a more nutritionally dense or complete drink as far as babyfood than this. I worry as a parent about a lot of things; but surprisingly, nutrition is not one of them. Even on days she doesn't feel like eating, she will drink this and I know she is getting more nutrition than any other baby in the world. I actually know of no other baby who is not eating meat; but is getting a complete amino acid set; and by my calculations, my baby gets some 10~30x more Omega fatty acids than any other kid I know.

I hope this helps the new parents out there who are equally dissatisfied with the commercial stuff that's available.

Is it cheap? Not really. But my baby's health, is well worth it. BTW, my baby is 18+ months old; and has NEVER BEEN SICK. I attribute a large portion of her great immune system to 2 things:

1) This recipe that she drinks
2) She goes to sleep 6:30pm every night; NO EXCEPTIONS. She sleeps a full 12 hours at night...

P.S. http://www.amazon.com/Nalgene-Bottle-Sleeve-bottles-Gray/dp/B002PLW88O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319336399&sr=8-1



I have a Nalgene water bottle; and so I bought one of these neoprene sleeves for it; but what we found out was that a bottle of the blended babyfood poured back into the kefir bottle, fits perfectly into one of these. So when we are on the go; this is what we slip the large kefir bottle into; and it keeps it cold for much much longer. So this item is highly recommended.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, I will try to answer as best as I can.


Last edited by twoblink on Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Dude111



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 142

PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmmmmm and the baby likes this??

Hmmmmmmm
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jqueeng02



Joined: 18 Oct 2011
Posts: 17

PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:20 am    Post subject: Baby food Reply with quote

That's a very interesting baby food. I would want to try it for my nephew who is 18 months old as well.
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twoblink



Joined: 17 Feb 2010
Posts: 16

PostPosted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Dude111

My daughter drinks about 1500cc's of this mixture a day. She goes through about 12 bottles of kefir a week.

My baby doesn't just like it, she LOVES IT. Almost every pic of her, she has her drinking cup filled with this.
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Jim Cooley



Joined: 09 Oct 2008
Posts: 377
Location: Seattle

PostPosted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 8:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

twoblink wrote:


My daughter drinks about 1500cc's of this mixture a day. She goes through about 12 bottles of kefir a week.




6.4 cups a day? Glad I'm not doing the diapers!
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twoblink



Joined: 17 Feb 2010
Posts: 16

PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 4:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes.. she pees and poops like a fertilizer mill..

I'd love for someone else to try the recipe and let me know..
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Dude111



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 142

PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well im glad she has something she likes so much Smile
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