Can I feed my baby miso soup?

[LJFATS]

With my 7 month old son now eating stage 2 and mashed up table foods, drinking juce, and soon to be interduced to cheerios, do you think I could feed him miso soup? Maybe if i thinned it out some and strained out all the garnishes? Odd question, I know.

[jennahan]

I think it is not such a wise idea as miso has a very high sodium content. If you want to feed your kid soy, why not just give him/her pureed edamame?

[Rinsewind]

You could ask your pediatrician, but some of the latest studies pretty much indicate that your baby can eat whatever you eat (well, a lot of junk food isn't so great), as long as there's nothing to choke on. Most prepared baby food is low sodium, so your baby might reject it for the salty taste, but I don't think there's any harm in trying. If it's something you ate a lot when you were pregnant, your baby might like it. I just read something in the press about this in the last few weeks-- may have been the New York Times, may have been Medline. I can't remember which-- sorry!

Any Japanese parents out there want to weigh in?

[sanrensho]

I would make a very thin miso soup that is more dashi flavor than miso flavor. Japanese infants are introduced to (thin) miso soup at a very young age.

[viaChgo]

One thing to keep in mind is that Miso soup is usually made with dashi which is made from bonito which is a fish product. Our pediatrician recommends no fish til 18 months. Not sure if this this is nit-picking but just thought I'd mention it.

The thing about these recommendations that make me wonder is that sometimes they make no sense based on other cultures. Do the Japanese not feed their infants any fish products at all when it's such a staple of their diet? Are infants in SE Asia able to avoid peanut products until age 3, as recommended here in the States?

[viaChgo]

One more thing about miso soup...we did feed our son, when he was about 1, some of the little tofu cubes from the miso soup & he loved it.

[SuzySushi]

  viaChgo said:

One more thing about miso soup...we did feed our son, when he was about 1, some of the little tofu cubes from the miso soup & he loved it.

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I second this! Our daughter also loved the tofu from miso soup and to this day (she's 9), it's like pulling teeth to get her to eat green vegetables but she loves miso soup with wakame (and I can sneak in some spinach ). I'd read the labels to check the sodium content on the miso, though. Different brands/types have lower sodium than others.

[sanrensho]

  viaChgo said:

One thing to keep in mind is that Miso soup is usually made with dashi which is made from bonito which is a fish product. Our pediatrician recommends no fish til 18 months. Not sure if this this is nit-picking but just thought I'd mention it.

The thing about these recommendations that make me wonder is that sometimes they make no sense based on other cultures. Do the Japanese not feed their infants any fish products at all when it's such a staple of their diet?

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You're right to wonder. Japanese toddlers eat fish products from a very young age and miso (in the form of thin miso soup) from when they are infants. They do not appear to be dying off due to the fish in their diet.

As mentioned above, thin miso soup is a great way to introduce infants to new foods like tofu, spinach and other leafy greens, daikon, and softened niboshi (dried fish).

[torakris]

I second (third) the suggestions to start off with the veggies and tofu from the soup rather than just feeding the soup itself. I am pretty sure by a year though my kids were drinking a pretty thinned out miso soup. Around two I would normally stick an ice cube in the bowl to thin it out as well as cool it down. At 3 they were drinking it like the rest of us.

Miso varies greatly in the amount of salt so I would stick with ones in the lower range and thin in out. What I often did was take the leftover miso soup (with the vegetables/tofu/etc) and place it in a blender, add some water and the leftover rice and blend it to an age appropriate size. I would then spoon out portions onto saran wrap and freeze them into a ziploc bag. Voila! instant baby food.

Some other words of warning, read labels carefully. If you are using instant dashi products they are seasoned quite heavily with msg as are some miso that are the dashi added types.

[yunnermeier]

  viaChgo said:

One thing to keep in mind is that Miso soup is usually made with dashi which is made from bonito which is a fish product. Our pediatrician recommends no fish til 18 months. Not sure if this this is nit-picking but just thought I'd mention it.

The thing about these recommendations that make me wonder is that sometimes they make no sense based on other cultures. Do the Japanese not feed their infants any fish products at all when it's such a staple of their diet? Are infants in SE Asia able to avoid peanut products until age 3, as recommended here in the States?

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I've always wondered that! Here (Malaysia), there aren't many people who're allergic to anything (or so it seems). I don't know a single person who's allergic to anything( well ,except for an intern who rented a room for 2 months at my place. she's allergic to seafood but she's German).

Toddlers are fed peanut butter all the time and fish porridge is common( a lot of chinese families here feed their babies mashed fish porridge or something instead of baby food).

i don't know anything about allergies or science but i'm just wondering if exposing kids to all kinds of food sorts of builds a resistance? i don't know!

[scovilleFiend]

  yunnermeier said:

i don't know anything about allergies or science but i'm just wondering if exposing kids to all kinds of food sorts of builds a resistance? i don't know!

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I pretty much have always overexposed myself to things that I think I potentially (or am) allergic to, and I don't have any allergies that I know of right now. I have also been told that this is extremely dumb to do, and could potentially cause serious health problems. Is life really worth living if I can't eat peanut sauces?

Maybe we need more doctor's on egullet. The concept of immunotherapy in allergies is regarded with great skepticism I believe, but it has been in use for quite awhile. A lot of allergies are genetic though, and I imagine this could explain why there are more allergies in certain countries/races. Therefore, if there is any disposition to things like peanuts in a family line, it would probably be a very bad idea to feed your kids such things. In regards to fish, I think a large part of the reccomendation against it is the mercury content. I assume that the fish quality outside of north america is better. I certainly wouldn't be feeding my kid farmed salmon anytime soon.