Some foods that babies love to eat can lead to excessive weight gain if consumed in large quantities. For instance, foods like mushrooms and chocolate... eating too much of these can cause a baby to "grow sideways".
Baby Weight Gain Culprit: Chocolate
Babies especially love sweets like chocolate. In fact, a small amount of chocolate has a calming effect, and its taste and texture can stimulate the brain's pleasure center, making people happy. Chocolate also has dental benefits; demineralization leads to cavities, but chocolate can slow down this process.
However, if babies are not very active, fat can easily accumulate. If they overeat these foods, be careful they might become a "chubby baby". Therefore, experts suggest that it is best for babies to eat chocolate at least once a month.
Baby Weight Gain Culprit: Instant Noodles
Instant noodles belong to the category of trans-fat foods. They are generally produced by processing vegetable oil with "hydrogenation" technology. Compared to regular vegetable oil, artificial trans fats have advantages such as being heat-resistant, less prone to spoilage, and having a longer shelf life. Currently, the American fast food industry uses artificial trans fats quite commonly, often in making crispy bread, french fries, and donuts. Some fats that make pastries flaky, margarine, and cooking oil for frying may all contain artificial trans fats.
When babies eat these snacks, they absorb artificial trans fatty acids, which can affect their growth and development and also cause a lack of lipids in the young brain, impacting their intellectual development.
Baby Weight Gain Culprit: Puffed Snacks
Puffed snacks not only easily lead to baby obesity, but they also contain relatively high levels of harmful metal elements like lead or aluminum. Parents should not let their children eat these foods often. The reasons puffed snacks have high lead and aluminum content are: first, processing these foods often requires adding additives like leavening agents, some of which contain relatively high levels of heavy metals like lead or aluminum; second, during the food processing, the food passes through metal pipes, which are usually made of an alloy of lead and tin. Under high temperatures, the lead can easily vaporize, and the vaporized lead can then contaminate the puffed snacks. Frequently eating puffed snacks is very harmful to children (especially those under 3 years old).
Excessive intake of aluminum mainly damages brain function. For example: it can interfere with a person's thinking, consciousness, and memory functions, cause nervous system diseases, manifesting as memory loss, visual and motor incoordination, brain damage, decreased intelligence, and in severe cases, it may lead to dementia.
Recommended Healthy Snacks for Babies
1. Heart-shaped Sandwiches
Use small slices of bread and freely pair them with peanut butter, sesame paste, ketchup, jam, baby honey, fruit and vegetable slices, small cheese, fried eggs, etc. Wrap them in plastic wrap for your baby to carry and eat.
2. Assorted Grains
Solid foods such as steamed or roasted and peeled sweet potatoes, potatoes, pumpkins, taro, corn, and homemade popcorn; as well as soups and porridges like multigrain congee, mung bean paste, nutritious cereal rings, nutritious oatmeal, and oat milk custard.
3. Homemade Sandwich Cookies
Use 2 small slices of whole wheat hard crackers or sugar-free soda crackers, non-baked egg rolls, or homemade dried steamed buns as the base. Prepare the filling according to the method used for the sandwiches above. Homemade fillings basically contain no various additives and unhealthy hydrogenated vegetable oils. They are superior to commercially available products in terms of color, taste, and nutrition.