Be sure and check out our current GIVEAWAY while you're here.
"A wonderful guide for getting babies off to the right start, and helping them enjoy the gift of health for life."
-Sally Fallon Morell (President, Weston A. Price Foundation)
As anyone who has ever visited the
“parenting” section of their library knows, there a lots of books
on raising babies. Some helpful, some not-so-much, some full of
conflicting advice, outdated “science”, or misguided judgements.
Pick any one topic of interest for parents (e.g. vaccines,
potty-training, sleep training, ad infinitum, etc....) and you have
fifty books. The topic of first foods is no different. There are tons
of books on feeding babies.
 |
| See it here. |
This book is guided by the
understanding that traditional cultures from around the world
understood the keys to optimal health.
Parents today face new challenges in
raising their children than previous generations. While we
are not plagued with the acute illnesses of the past, we have a whole
new set of concerns—chronic conditions such as autism, allergies,
asthma, ADD, depression, IBS, Celiac disease, obesity, tooth decay,
and cancer to name a few.
In Super Nutrition for Babies, Katherine Erlich, M.D. And Kelly
Genzlinger, C.N.C., C.M.T.A., offer their solution to these modern
problems using traditional wisdom and nutritional knowledge: what
they call “Super Nutrition”.
What is Super Nutrition?
In Chapter 1 of Super Nutrition for Babies, Erlich and Genzlinger outline what they call the "Four Pillars of Super
Nutrition". Foods with super nutrition provide the following:
- Digestibility: facilitate digestion and support intestinal health.
- Purity: reduce toxic exposure and improve detoxification capabilities
- Immune Boosting: strengthen and support immunity.
- Nutrient Worth: provide optimally nourishing foods.
These four categories are based on the
work of Dr. Weston A. Price who traveled for nearly ten years to different indigenous
cultures during the early 1900s and identified the similarities between
their diets to understand how they could eat so differently from each
other, but all have utter superb health.
This book reveals their secrets so you can share them with your baby.
This book reveals their secrets so you can share them with your baby.
The Four Food Categories
After outlining their understanding of super nutrition, Erlich and Genzlinger go on to outline four different categories that food can be divided into on the basis of how they help or hinder a child to grow to their optimal health. (Note: the authors fully expect that children throughout life will eat from all four categories, but the point is to understand which foods fall into which category so you can help direct their health.) The categories are helpful acronyms and are as follows:
CRAP:
Chemical
Removes body's nutrients
Addictive
Processed.
Examples of some CRAP foods would be
fast food, vegetable oils, cereal, GMOs, refined sugar and refined
salt.
OKAY:
Ordinary
Knockoffs of real food
Adequate, not optimal
Yield subpar health if fed exclusively.
Examples of OKAY foods include unsoaked
or unsprouted grains, grocery-store eggs, nonorganic fruits and
vegetables, whole-food sweeteners.
PURE:
Pasture based
Unadulterated
Rich in nutrients
Enzyme containing
Examples of PURE foods include soaked
grains, eggs from free-range chickens, etc.
POWER:
Protective
Optimal nutrition
Wisdom of the ancients
Enriching
Regenerating
Examples of POWER foods are liver and
other organ meats form pastured, organically raised animals, fermented codliver oil, raw, grass-fed, organic dairy, bone marrow, fish roe,
etc...
As stated before, the authors expect all children will at some point in their lives eat from all the different categories, but the point is to have the knowledge to know what is what and to be able to make food choices with that knowledge in mind.
The What, the Why, the How
Having laid the foundation for their views on nutrition, the next four chapters of Super Nutrition (Chapters 2-6) deal with baby at different stage. Each chapter comes complete with a wonderful, appetizing set of recipes (many taken from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions).
Each chapter explains the what, the why and the how of Erlich and Genzlinger's nutritional approach as well as easy referencing charts. Going into detail about each chapter is beyond what I can cover in this post, but I highly recommend owning this book because I promise you will want to continue referencing it as baby grows.
(Quick side note: this book has interspersed baby food ads from the 30s 40s and 50s to illustrate what “appealed to parents who selected and judged foods based on what their mothers had fed them.” (13). Canned foods were new. Prior to this, all baby food had been made at home... Worth owning just for how entertaining these ads are!)
Mom and Milk
After detailing each state of
development and addressing important nuritional information for the child,
Chapter 7 deals with something a little different: mom's diet.
Chapter 7 is titled “Mom's Diet Does Matter: Critical Feeding
Information for Breast-Fed Babies”. This chapter details the sort
of diet nursing and pregnant mothers should aim for as well as
helpful and non-judgmental advice for troubleshooting breastfeeding.
In Chapter 8 “Drugstore Formula
Doesn't Cut It: Better Options Than Commercial Alternatives” Erlich
and Genzlinger outline just what exactly is wrong with commercial
formula. They don't just stop there, however. They give lots of
alternatives for those who can't breastfeed: including looking into getting milk from other lactating mom's, supplementing store-bought
formula (if this is your only option) with cod liver oil and
probiotics, or three different WAPF-based homemade formulas (raw
cow's milk, raw goat's milk or liver-based.)
Finally, to conclude the book, is a
section of recommended reading that is full of many wonderful books
for parents who wish to further study the topics discussed in the
book.
|
| See it here. |
In short, this book is an absolutely
indispensable, wonderful, affordable reference book. Super Nutrition For Babies makes the perfect companion to Sally
Fallon's Nourishing Traditions' few short pages on how to feed infants.
It fills in where that book leaves off.
For the parent wishing to start their child off on a nutrient-rich diet, this book would make a wonderful, helpful companion.
Buy it for a pregnant friend, get if for yourself, give it to your child. Or, if your feeling lucky, enter the giveaway below! :)
Buy it for a pregnant friend, get if for yourself, give it to your child. Or, if your feeling lucky, enter the giveaway below! :)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
p.s. A big thanks to the authors for sponsoring this giveaway and sending me a copy of their wonderful book to review!
Looks like a great resource! I'll have to check for it at our library ... if I don't win. :)
ReplyDeleteI would love this book! It's never too early to prepare :)
ReplyDeleteI would love this book! Better to be prepared :)
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to buying a copy of this resource for a pregnant friend. I should also pick one up for my favorite midwifery group, too.
ReplyDeleteI have had one child and I am on a journey to better health while waiting for my 2nd little miracle to happen. I'd love to have a book like this in my personal collection to encourage me to eat for health and wellness next time instead of just for caloric intake (and food cravings). Then, once I've read it, I'd of course loan it out to anyone who asks! :)
ReplyDeleteLove the ads. I haven't heard of this book and am really interested in learning about how babies were fed differently in the past and how they are fed in cultures other than our own. I definitely believe that starting out by feeding babies good food from the start is the key to teaching lifelong good eaters!!
ReplyDeletenever heard of this - looks like a good read! also, not sure if you know, but sally fallon came out with a nourishing tradtions book for children this feburary - LOVE it! thanks for doing a giveaway :-)
ReplyDeleteMy little guy is going to start solids very soon and this book would really come in handy.
ReplyDeleteI would love to win Vaccinations by Aviva Jill Romm, as my husband & I have decided not to vaccinate our daughter (Charlie) & are always interested in others point of view on the subject. We are always learning. :)
ReplyDelete