Feeding your baby more fruits in the spring can not only prevent illness and promote health, but also supplement the various nutrients your baby needs, allowing your little one to seize the opportunity for a growth spurt. Let's take a look at how babies should eat fruit in the spring!
Principles for babies eating fruit in the spring
1. Pair cold and warm fruits
Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes balance and harmony of yin and yang. Therefore, babies with a constitution that leans towards "heat" should eat more cooling foods, while those with a constitution that leans towards "cold" should eat more warming foods, and the same principle applies to eating fruit.
Warming fruits mainly include: cherries, peaches, oranges, kumquats, etc. However, eating too many warming fruits can easily lead to "heatiness" (上火).
Cooling fruits mainly include: bananas, sugarcane, mangoes, loquats, apples, pears, strawberries, pomelos, oranges, etc.
Neutral fruits mainly include: pineapples, starfruits, papayas, lilies, etc.
2. Eat sour and sweet fruits separately
Among spring fruits, sour and sweet varieties are more common. Sour fruits mainly include oranges, grapefruits, loquats, hawthorns, pears, etc. They generally have effects like astringing sweat, whetting the appetite, promoting fluid production, and aiding digestion. "Gan" (甘), or sweet, refers to a wide range of foods. Common ones include sugarcane, pears, peanuts, watermelon, bananas, cherries, oranges, black sesame seeds, chestnuts, red dates, lotus seeds, longan pulp, goji berries, etc. They typically have nourishing, tonifying, and pain-relieving effects. Some foods are slightly sour and slightly sweet, such as apples, papayas, starfruits, pineapples, strawberries, lilies, pine nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, raisins, etc., and are mostly classified as neutral.
Spring Fruit "Red List": Four Fruits to Boost Your Baby's Immunity
Eating fruit not only replenishes essential vitamins and water for the body, but some fruits can also enhance immunity. Spring is a season of many illnesses, as well as a period of rapid physical development for babies. Eating more of the following 4 fruits can help boost your baby's resistance and energy levels! Let's see which spring fruits can enhance immunity.
1. Mango
Mangoes are rich in nutrients. Eating mangoes has the benefits of anti-cancer, skin beautification, preventing hypertension and arteriosclerosis, preventing constipation, relieving coughs, and cleansing the intestines. Babies with allergies should not eat mangoes. When giving a baby mango, it's best for mothers to cut the flesh into small pieces and feed it directly to avoid contact with facial skin. After eating mango, the baby should rinse their mouth and wash their face to avoid residual juice.
2. Pear
Pears are a fruit that can make one feel vibrant and energetic. They are full of water and rich in vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and trace elements like iodine. They help maintain the health of cell tissues, aid organs in detoxifying and purifying, soften blood vessels, and promote blood to transport more calcium to bones. However, pears should be chewed slowly to be better absorbed.
3. Cherry
The various nutrients in cherries are very potent. Every 100 grams of cherries contain up to 59 mg of iron, the highest among fruits, and their vitamin A content is 4-5 times more than grapes, apples, and oranges. In addition, cherries also contain vitamins B and C, as well as mineral elements like calcium and phosphorus. Although cherries are nutritious and sweet, eating too many is not good for a baby's health. Cherries are "warming" in nature; eating too many can cause "heatiness," nosebleeds, and lung damage. Eating too much at once can lead to stomach pain, acid reflux, and even abdominal pain and diarrhea. Furthermore, it's best not to eat cherries on an empty stomach to avoid aggravating damage to the gastric mucosa. The daily intake should not exceed 12 cherries.
4. Orange
The carotene (vitamin A precursor) content in oranges is second only to apricots and higher than other fruits. Citrus fruits also contain various vitamins, as well as elements like magnesium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and silicon. When giving oranges to babies, mothers should pay attention to the following points: it's not advisable to eat oranges before a meal or on an empty stomach, and the amount should be controlled. A baby eating 3 oranges a day can meet their daily vitamin C requirement. If a baby gets "heatiness" from eating too many oranges, they should stop eating them for 1-2 weeks.
Spring Fruit "Black List": Don't Give These Fruits to Your Baby
Eating fruit is the most direct way for babies to get vitamins and other nutrients. But eating fruit also depends on the season. As spring arrives with its unpredictable weather, you should be cautious about which fruits to give.
1. Pineapple
Some people experience allergic reactions after eating pineapple, such as nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, numbness of the lips, and itchy skin. This is because pineapples contain bromelain and other enzymes. Pineapple should be soaked in light salt water for over ten minutes after being cut to destroy these enzymes before eating.
Pineapple is a tropical fruit rich in dietary fiber and bromelain, which is great for preventing constipation and indigestion, making it a good choice for summer. Street vendors often sell pineapples soaked in salt water in glass tanks, with a chopstick in each piece. This reminds everyone to consider: how long has the salt water in the glass tank been changed? Are the chopsticks new? This is not only unhygienic but can also cause secondary contamination.
2. Banana
To make banana peels look tender and yellow, some unscrupulous vendors use excessive sulfur dioxide to ripen them, but the flesh remains hard and not sweet at all. The correct method should be to ripen them with heat.
Banana is a nutritious tropical fruit, sweet in flavor and cool in nature, with effects of moistening the intestines and clearing heat. Its natural season for ripening is summer.
3. Grape
Some unscrupulous vendors and farmers mix ripening agent ethylene with water, soak unripe green grapes in the solution, and the green grapes will turn purple in a day or two.
The natural ripening season for grapes is August and September. Grapes are sweet, slightly sour, and neutral in nature, with effects of nourishing qi and blood, strengthening muscles and bones, and promoting urination.
4. Strawberry
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, strawberries have the effect of relieving summer heat and clearing heat. In spring, people's "liver fire" (肝火) is often more旺盛 (prosperous), and eating strawberries can help suppress it. Also, it's best to eat strawberries after a meal because they contain a lot of pectin and fiber, which can promote gastrointestinal motility, aid digestion, improve constipation, and prevent hemorrhoids and colon cancer. Strawberries that are hollow, misshapen, irregularly sized, and overly large are usually caused by excessive hormones.
Strawberries are very appealing fruits with a high vitamin C content, so eating fresh strawberries is a good choice. The natural ripening season for strawberries is late May each year.
5. Sugarcane
Sugarcane in the spring is mostly from the autumn harvest. After being stored for a whole winter, it is highly prone to spoilage. At the end of the sugarcane, a flocculent or fluffy white substance may appear, and when cut, there will be red, thread-like substances on the cross-section. Sugarcane is a great "fire-extinguishing" food, sweet in flavor and cool in nature, with effects of clearing heat, promoting fluid production, reducing qi, moistening dryness, harmonizing the stomach, and lowering adverse qi. The ripening season for sugarcane is November. In addition to spoilage from improper storage, unripe sugarcane can also become moldy after being cut.
8 Mistakes to Avoid When Eating Fruit in the Spring
Mistake 1: Eating whenever you want
Fruits contain more organic acids and tannins, and some also contain highly active proteases. Eating at the wrong time can irritate and harm the stomach.
Mistake 2: The more you eat, the better
The daily fruit intake should be around 200 grams. Most fruits are high in dietary fiber, and eating too much can cause stomach pain and bloating.
Mistake 3: Fruit can replace vegetables
Although the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables is similar, fruit cannot replace vegetables. For example, the vitamin C content in cabbage and spinach is about 10 times higher than that in apples, peaches, and pears.
Mistake 4: Fruits have the highest vitamin content
Vitamins are a large family with many members. Fruits may be rich in some components, but they also have their "shortcomings." For instance, fruits do not contain fat-soluble vitamins, and the vitamin C content in most fruits is limited.
Mistake 5: You must peel fruit to avoid pesticides
The peel and the part just under it are often the most nutritious parts of the fruit, so throwing them away is a waste. In fact, there's no need to worry excessively about pesticide residues on the peel. China has explicitly banned the use of highly toxic pesticides on direct-entry foods like fruits and vegetables. Moreover, most fruits are eaten several days or even months after being harvested, and the pesticides have mostly decomposed. Before eating fruit, you can rinse it repeatedly or soak it in rice washing water for a while to remove surface residues.
Mistake 6: Foreign fruits are more nutritious
"Foreign fruits" have high transportation, packaging, and storage costs, so their prices are also high. To make them look good, these fruits might be treated with preservatives or waxed to maintain a shiny appearance, but their nutritional value gradually degrades during transport. Therefore, it's best to eat local, seasonal fruits.