This title shows how and when to start your baby on solid foods, with detailed information on the best and safest high chair, spoons, bibs, and other feeding equipment. It describes which foods to introduce to your baby during each month of his first year, with details on proper food consistency, amount, and temperature. It also shows how much you can expect your baby to eat and drink during the months of her first year with information on her digestive system at each age. It provides interesting details on your baby's physical, emotional, intellectual, and psychological development as it applies to self-feeding and mealtimes; and also shows how you can increase your baby's or toddler's self-esteem and self-confidence during mealtimes. It lets you know the age you can expect your baby to start finger feeding, drinking from a cup, eating table foods, and self-feeding with a spoon and fork. If you choose to make home-made baby food, this book will give you the knowledge and confidence to make your own healthy and safe home-made baby vegetables, fruits, cereals, meats, and other Super Baby Foods. There is extensive information on food allergies; foods considered choking hazards; foods likely to cause digestive problems in young babies; and, safety precautions to prevent burns and poisoning. This title offers thousands of money-saving and time-saving child care and kitchen tips. It tells how to make meals fun! It also offers food decorating; cute cake patterns; toddler party snacks and favours; and, many other entertaining ideas! It includes more than 350 quick, easy, delicious, nutritious, and sometimes entertaining recipes for babies and toddlers, including imitation home-made recipes for: Pop Tarts, Grape Nuts and other breakfast cereals, instant breakfast drinks, hot chocolate mix, Shake-N-Bake, Pam, Fruit Roll-Ups, Stove-top Stuffing Mix, home-made vanilla extract, Hamburger Helper, and more. There is so much cheaper and healthier (no preservatives needed!) to make for your toddler and family! This title also provides recipes for home-made play dough, finger paints and brush paints, bubbles for blowing, and dozens more children's arts and crafts recipes and ideas. It presents ideas for Halloween, Christmas, Easter, birthday parties, and home-made toddler toys and gifts. It contains all about nutrition and your baby, including nutrient tables of all major vitamins and minerals with convenient baby-sized portions to help you be sure that your baby is getting proper nourishment. It shows how to save money by making home-made yogurt, fruit leather, and how to grow sprouts, fruit plants, and herbs in your kitchen for fun and food. There are easy, economical recipes for home-made baby accessories, such as baby wipes, diaper cream, and many more. This title includes baby-safe and environmentally-friendly recipes for household cleaning products, such as baby-safe drain cleaners, furniture polish, window cleaners, and more. These recipes cost only pennies to make and are so safe that most are actually edible! There are tips for removing crayon, spit-up, and urine stains from baby clothes, carpets, and furniture. This book is the most complete and well-researched baby food book on the market today. It is cleverly designed for the busy parent to read only a small part each month as your baby grows.

These glaring statements make this book one that I would not recommend for my patients. If you are aware of all the facts above and will double check some of her principles with other authorative text, then this is a good book on home preparing food in a wholesome, organic manner.

249 of 270 found the following review helpful:


Use with Caution  Jun 03, 1999
There is a lot of great information in this book. However, there is also quite a bit of nutritional misinformation to go with it. So I found myself having to double-check any recommendation I didn't already know about with another source which somewhat defeats the purpose of buying the book. That said I'm a complete kitchen klutz so having a book that explains exactly how to shop for, prepare and freeze each food is very helpful.

I'd just be very, very careful about using the exact diet as recommended for a baby under 1 year without consulting with your pediatrician first. For example, in order to avoid the "evil" meat, the book recommends introducing nuts, seeds & soy into the baby's diet from a pretty early age. These foods are all high allergen foods and really are not any better for a small baby than some pureed chicken. The book also recommends liver powder -- but organ meats are high in toxins. It also recommends cottage cheese starting at 6 months but cottage cheese has all the same problems as cow's milk and should not be given until you are ready to start straight cow's milk.

So in some senses I think the "cure" (a diet full of allergy-causing foods) is worse than the "disease" (eating meat once in a while).

The book is also not very bfing friendly... if you push solids in the amounts recommended here and as early as recommended here, you could easily have supply problems or your baby could self-wean by 9-10 months.

70 of 72 found the following review helpful:


Here's how to tell if you'd like the book:  Jun 06, 2003
I am shocked at all of the poor reviews this book was given, and I hope they don't turn people away from a book that I really appreciated. When I first opened the book, I read instructions on how to prepare and store almost every fruit or vegetable you can imagine (what a great resource!), but also saw things like grinding your own millet for cereal, making your own yogurt, adding kelp for nutrients and I thought, boy am I in for a long read! But what I thought would be terribly complex wasn't complex at all. Her directions are very simple and easy, and I felt she always kept the idea of less time and less money is best. I was consistently surprised how easy it was to put my baby on a wonderfully healthy diet, and it gave me such a sense of pride to do this for my daughter.
Still wondering if it�s for you? This is for mothers who want to make their own food, but is also aware of the extreme importance of nutrition. Friends of mine who had and had not made their own baby food would gasp at the time and energy they thought I put into my baby's food, without realizing that it wasn't very time-consuming at all and was very rewarding. If these are your thoughts, stay away from this book. If you aren't willing to really read and learn about nutrition, stay away from this book. If you roll your eyes at "tree-huggers" and think organic farming is nonsense, you may not want to buy this book either because there is touch of this attitude. . She never sounded "preachy" to me, she just sounded well-educated, however I personally have strong views on human nutrition and how we treat our bodies AND communities by the food we consume.
Also: I�m pretty sure that the comments about the nuts and nitrates in carrots and spinach ARE mentioned in the book. I think some people read only some parts and were ready to ring the alarm bells. If you read further, there are warnings for issues such as those.
On a final note: After I bought mine, it came with me EVERYWHERE so I could read a few chapters whenever I got a chance. I bought it for a friend and I laughed because she was carrying it with her in the diaper bag. For those of us who loved the book, we know it's worthwhile. I recommend checking the book out from the library first, and then buying a copy if it seems like something you would really like.

40 of 41 found the following review helpful:


Chock-full of everything you need to know  Nov 17, 1999 By J. Jiumaleh
I have the first edition of this book and bought the second edition when it became available because it contained even more recipes and tips for food and play.

Yaron brings together expert advice and common sense from a variety of sources. In this one volume a reader can find nutrition information we previously had to gather from a variety of books, experts and real-life experience. Her information on nutrition and safety is cutting-edge. While I gathered tips and advice from my pediatrician and from parenting newsletters available through my state Extension service, Yaron's book delivered more information in more detail and an easy-to-read format. Nutrition information can be referenced food by food or by a child's age of development. Whenever I had a question about the appropriateness of a certain food for my baby, I could quickly look it up. I learned quite a lot about general nutrition that's been helpful to my own diet. The book will be of special interest to vegetarian or vegetarian-leaning parents.

The recipe section is invaluable for those "I don't know what to prepare" snacks and mealtimes. Yaron's tips are also money-savers for those on a tight budget. The new edition has more "do-it-yourself" ideas for play and parties and serves as a nice reference for the times when the reader's own creativity is lacking.

32 of 32 found the following review helpful:


This book is for EVERYONE with children  Nov 27, 1999 By SMH
This book is for everyone with children. We have been using this book for eight months now with amazing success. Parents can use the information for making homemade babyfood, nutrtion info., food intro. timelines, many tot (my toddler that is) tested and approved recipes etc. I liked this book because I was nervous about not giving my infant enough nutrients,food allergies, as well as preparation techniques (I had NO experience in the kitchen) if I made my own babyfood. This book is for parents of all levels of experience. It will answer ALL of your questions (you can email the author if you have any unanswered) and walk you through step by step, and take the fright out of dealing with your child's health and nutrition first hand. If you think you don't have the time or the energy to do this, think again. Check this book out at the library, read a little and I'm positive you'll want to add this book to your permanent collection. I could never have done it with so much confidence without this book. I have the HEALTHY 14 month old to proove it! I only gave this book four stars because there is an extra section that does not pertain to nutriton (kids crafts) that I do not use and really adds a lot of bulk to the book.

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