When Carli Sussman's son Oliver was five months old, she and her husband started giving him cooked meat to suck on as an adjunct to the breast milk he was getting as his primary diet.
"The first thing we gave him was a strip of rib-eye steak," recalls the Vancouver mom. "At that point, he wasn't actually eating any of it. We were just giving him pieces of food that we had. And he was just sort of putting them in his mouth, which is what five-month-olds do with everything."
So there were no surprises for Sussman in updated infant-feeding guidelines recently released by Health sa国际传媒, which advise that babies at six months old need to start ingesting iron-rich foods - including beef and poultry.
Those guidelines, aimed at health-care providers for dissemination to parents, say that babies at that age need to start eating meat, meat alternatives like tofu and legumes and even eggs and fish.
The recommendations, posted without fanfare on Health sa国际传媒's website, seemed to take some parents by surprise.
"What probably really got the attention was the fact that some of these examples were new to people," says Jennifer McCrea, a nutrition adviser for Health sa国际传媒 who helped prepare the guidelines.
But they would not necessarily be new to health professionals, she says.
McCrea, a member of the 14-person working group that drafted the slightly revised guidelines, says the document doesn't represent a change from the 2004-05 recommendations, but is a reaffirmation of advice stressing the importance of introducing solid foods containing iron.
"Meat can be one of those iron-rich first foods, but there are a whole range of options," she says.
The guidelines, penned by experts at Health sa国际传媒, the Canadian Paediatric Society, Dietitians of sa国际传媒 and the Breastfeeding Committee for sa国际传媒, say: "Infants should be offered iron-containing foods two or more times each day. ... Breastfeeding continues to provide the main source of nutrition as other foods are introduced."
Dr. Jeff Critch, a pedia-trician in St. John's, N.L., who was also a member of the Infant Feeding Joint Working Group, says it's essential for babies to start getting more iron into their diet starting at about six months.
"Iron is very important for our blood. It's also important for child development," especially neurological development, says Critch.
During the last trimester of pregnancy, the fetus builds up a store of iron from the mother, which carries the child through the first half-year of life.
And although breast milk contains iron, it's only in small amounts, says Critch. "After six months of age, (the baby's) iron stores are getting really depleted and we need to look for other sources because the breast milk at that point is not going to be sufficient to supply the iron needed."
Parents, McCrea says, should be guided by an infant's appetite "and the cues back to you of when they want more and when they're full, because you're trying to nurture those natural hunger cues that they have that are really starting at that age.
Along with continued breastfeeding, baby's first solids should be iron-fortified cereals as well as meat, tofu, eggs, fish or legumes that have been cooked until tender and mashed with a fork or minced finely with a knife or food grinder.
Well-cooked, pureed or mashed-up vegetables and fruits would then be added to the diet.
