Baby Led Weaning Ideas Question:
“Introducing cocoa or cocao to babies under 12mo? Would you recommend? I was reading an interesting article here about carob vs cocoa”
Gill Rapley’s Response:
I don’t really have a position on this. My primary interest is in infant development and behaviour – in what eating is like for babies, and in what they learn about food, rather than in their nutrition per se. Clearly, the more nutritious what we offer babies is, the better, so in that sense perhaps carob is preferable. However, my main concern is the message we give our children about which foods are desirable, or to be expected at every meal, since these messages can last a lifetime.
If a parent chooses to make sweet foods using carob and then either offers those foods all the time, or talks about them as ‘treats’, the baby/child is likely to develop a particular liking for them. This may make them crave or seek out those flavours – or something similar (chocolate?) in later childhood/life. The opposite can also happen, where the parent effectively demonises chocolate, explaining that ‘in our family we don’t eat X [chocolate] because …’. This can result in the child feeling that they are missing out – and being even more keen to try the ‘forbidden’ food as soon as the opportunity arises!
For me, then, it’s not so much about ‘carob vs. chocolate’ but about how we introduce either of those foods (if at all) – specifically, whether we end up doing it in a way that distorts the child’s learned response to it, with possible consequences that are the opposite of what we were trying to achieve.
