I’ve had this idea several times before. I would like to do a diet of nothing but grocery store baby food. I’d eat the Gerber’s stuff in jars, and maybe I’d try infant formula too, for a couple of months.
I’ve eaten jars of baby food before. It’s good, actually – I like it. But canned food’s vitamins get destroyed, and then, they have to replace the missing vitamins with synthetic vitamins, which are harmful to you in some ways (though I won’t go into it now). All the vitamins in infant formula are synthetic. I’d like to observe all my symptoms and experiences on this diet. (*Oops! Edit! I just looked at some jars on the shelf at Wal-Mart. They DO NOT have a bunch of synthetic vitamins added. I actually bought a couple small jars and I’m going to try them.*)
That would be useful if you were planning to actually feed that type of food to your children. It would help a mother understand what her child is going through, why they are getting gas, why they are getting intestinal cramps, why they are getting constipated (synthetic iron supplements added to baby food probably cause constipation), why they are crying all the time, why they are restless and miserable, why they vomit, why they can’t sleep.
However, this doesn’t apply to me, because I’m not going to feed my children jars of baby food, or infant formula. Anything in the store which is specifically designed for ‘babies,’ I will avoid like the plague. If it says ‘baby’ on it, then I will never buy it. I will feed them normal adult food. First, I’ll feed them breast milk. When they want to eat normal food, I’ll give that to them, and there won’t be any jars of commercially prepared baby food.
I used to believe that people probably chewed up the food and then spit it into the baby’s mouth, which, I suspected, was the origin of the French kiss, where you put your tongue into the other person’s mouth. I’m not joking, I’m serious, I really have believed that maybe that’s how they fed babies. However, after reading some things that other people have written, I now believe that there isn’t ever a time period when babies are naturally required to eat solid food but are unable to do so because they don’t have teeth. If they don’t have teeth yet, then they don’t require solid food, the end. If they do have teeth, then they are capable of chewing. I’ve read about children who decided on their own that they were curious about the solid food that the adults were eating, and the kids took some off the plates and tried to eat it, without any difficulties, even though technically their teeth weren’t ready for that yet. They won’t be able to rip and tear large pieces of meat, but they would be able to just swallow the bites whole if you chopped up some meat into small pieces or something.
Anyway, the point was that I came to believe that there isn’t even any need for the ‘French kissing’ method of feeding babies. They simply do not need any of the things that are sold on the store shelves that are intended for babies. There is no need at all to feed children ground-up, blenderized food during a time period when they don’t have teeth yet.
I’ve also read that teething is painless for children who are eating a primitive diet, and so, all the fuss about teething is a consequence of the modern lifestyle too, just like everything else.
But… maybe I should try the baby food diet, just for fun. Do they really expect you to feed your baby *nothing but* infant formula and jars of baby food? That’s a horrible diet.
I picked up a box of powdered formula on the shelf at Wal-Mart and read it. On the back there was a disclaimer saying that experts agreed about the benefits of breast milk. That disclaimer was written at the very top of the instructions. However, it was only a single sentence, and it gave no detailed suggestions about *how* a person might be able to quit using baby formula. Do you think that would influence an ignorant, poor, uneducated person’s choice to use formula (because it is, in fact, the ignorant, poor, and uneducated people who are using formula, while the knowledgeable, wealthy, educated people are using breast milk).
I’d like to see the formula banned completely, and for all of those people who are now helplessly addicted to it, due to the fact that their breast milk has dried out (since they haven’t been using it) and they now have no choice but to use some kind of substitute, those people should be helped by wet nurses, or they should be taught how to stimulate lactation – and all of their plastic dental fillings ought to be removed so that they can stop complaining about how it hurts their breasts whenever they try to breastfeed. Painful breasts are not a normal phenomenon, and they have a specific cause, and dental fillings or other plastic implants in the mouth are usually the cause. I first experienced painful breasts whenever I had a plastic orthodontic retainer in my mouth when I was a teenager, but back then, I didn’t know what was causing the pain.
Oh well, the baby food diet – just an idea. I’d have to make a documentary about it, like the guy who tried the McDonald’s diet and made a documentary.
