Nutritionists today argue about how healthy soup is for an adult, in fact, being pieces of food that are highly diluted with liquid. It reduces the concentration of gastric juice, slowing down and even disrupting the digestion process. But for a kid who still does not know how to chew and drink, soup is simply necessary and very useful.
When should soup appear in a child's diet?
The first soups cooked in vegetable broth can be given to a child as early as 5-6 months. At this age, soup is already an urgent need, since it is a source of fiber useful for the baby's peristalsis, stimulating metabolic processes and digestion. Soup is a low-calorie and low-carbohydrate dish that allows you to increase the amount of food you eat. In addition, properly cooked vegetable soup is a source of nutrients and vitamins that are essential for the development and growth of a child. The first soups should be cooked only from vegetables and only in vegetable broth, which will not cause digestion problems. After a couple of weeks, you can add a little separately boiled meat to the soup - veal or chicken, ground in mashed potatoes.
Soups cooked in meat broth should appear in the baby's diet no earlier than a year. This is due to the fact that the broth is a concentrated extract of meat, too heavy to digest a dish. Therefore, the first meat broths are secondary and they should be cooked only from boneless chicken or veal. Secondary broths are boiled by draining the first water after it boils. In such a broth, which is boiled over low heat, chopped vegetables are placed 20-30 minutes until cooked. Spices are not added to soups for children, and you need to put very little salt. A full-fledged soup - the kind that adults eat - a child can start eating by 3-4 years old.
How to make soup for a child
The most convenient and correct soup for babies up to one year old is puree soup. For the first few soups in his life, you can use water as broth, in which pieces of vegetables were boiled. Do not cook them for long to preserve the maximum vitamins, and do not chop them too finely. As soon as the vegetables can be easily pierced with a fork, remove them from the stove, grind with a special blender nozzle designed for homogenization. Boil the resulting liquid puree again, cool and feed the baby with it.
To prepare a real vegetable soup, the vegetable broth is first cooked separately. Then the vegetables and herbs are taken out and the ones from which the soup will be cooked are put in: pumpkin, or green peas, or cauliflower, etc. To make the vegetables better absorbed, you can add a little sour cream or good olive oil to the soup. When the baby has already learned to chew, you can give him vegetables in the soup, cooked coarsely, and then chopped smaller.
