Meat products, no doubt, are important in the diet of the growing toddler, but can sausages be attributed to them? If they periodically appear on the table during a family dinner or lunch, then it is not surprising that the crumb will ask to try a piece. In addition, now on store shelves you can find sausages with the inscription "for children". Therefore, many mothers think at what age they can be given to children, how harmful such sausages are and whether it is worth including them in the children's menu.
Are they helpful?
The taste of sausages attracts most kids, and parents like that such a product is prepared very quickly.
However, these semi-finished products are not recommended as a substitute for meat products for the following reasons:
- Although meat is their basis, there are other components in such a product, often harmful to children. Among them there are flavor enhancers, dyes, preservatives and other additives. Any of the additional components can cause allergies.
- To make the taste more intense, they contain a lot of spices and an excessive amount of salt. Such substances are undesirable for the nutrition of a small child. In addition, having started to consume sausages, some children refuse traditional meat dishes, because their taste is more bland.
Can I give it to children?
Such a product is acceptable in the children's diet if it appears on the child's table occasionally, for example, as an emergency aid to a mother who did not have time to cook dinner. Sausages intended for children (marked on the package) contain less chemical additives, fat and salt than a semi-finished product for adults. In addition, such sausages are regularly tested, so the mother can be sure that they do not contain substances that are toxic to the child.
How to choose?
- Purchasing a product must include checking the expiration dates. If parents buy a stale product, it can cause poisoning.
- If there are no special sausages for children on sale, for a child over 3 years old, a product with the words "dairy" is suitable.
- Squeeze the selected sausages with your hand - if they are too soft, this indicates a large amount of fat and soy in their composition.
- Having welded, look at their color - if they turn red, then there are a lot of nitrites in them.
- If, after cooking, they are blown away or shriveled, this indicates the addition of an excess of carrageenan to their composition.
- Parents should try the purchased product first. With a spicy, salty or sour taste, they should not be given to babies.
- Store the opened packaging for a short time - maximum 2 days.
At what age can you try?
Even those products that are allowed for children should not be given earlier than 2-3 years of age.... Most doctors do not recommend giving such meat products to a one-year-old child. They are sure that For children under 3 years old, it is best to cook natural meat, which appears in complementary foods from 8-9 months.
When the baby tastes sausages, in the absence of a negative reaction to such a product, it is permissible to give it once a week. If the crumbs have gastrointestinal diseases, allergies or obesity, it is advisable to refuse them.
What to cook with and how to serve
A sausage should be offered to a child after cleaning it from its original packaging and boiling it. Sometimes the mother may not see it, and the baby may bite it off along with the package. There is no need to worry that the baby ate a little sausage with cellophane. The film is not digested in the children's intestines and will come out with time with feces.
It should be noted that the design of children's dishes is important for a good appetite for the toddler, so a mother should be interested in how to beautifully decorate food for a baby, even if these are ordinary sausages. For example, it can be sliced longitudinally on one side before cooking. Then the cooked products will look like octopuses.
Often, this product is simply supplemented with a cereal side dish or vegetables, for example, they cook mashed potatoes for children with them. Sometimes mothers cook vegetable soup with sausages.
Sausages with spaghetti are very popular among children. You can offer them such a dish in an original way, if you pierce pieces of sausages with raw spaghetti, and then cook them.
Many children also love baked goods with sausages, for example, if they are baked in dough. In this case, the dough can be either yeast or puff pastry. For ease of use, they can be prepared on skewers. To do this, first they are pricked on skewers, and then wrapped with a strip of dough.
How to cook with your own hands
If the child really likes the sausages from the store, and the mother wants to give him a more useful product, she will be interested in how to make something similar herself. This is also true in a situation where parents do not want to introduce the baby to store products, but prefer to include a similar product in the children's diet with greater benefit. The recipe for homemade sausages is very simple.
To do this, buy chicken fillet to grind it at home. You can also make minced turkey or rabbit. An egg and a little milk are added to the minced meat, as well as salt to taste. For a change in future sausages, you can include chopped boiled vegetables or a little grated cheese.
The prepared minced meat is laid out on a rectangle from a baking bag or from foil. You can also make homemade sausages in cling film. Having wrapped the minced meat, twist the ends of the package to make a "sausage".
The resulting product can be immediately boiled or baked in the oven, but having made many blanks at once, it is convenient to send them to the freezer. Then mom will always have the opportunity to quickly boil a dish for dinner or lunch, dipping the semi-finished product into boiling water without defrosting.
For more information on processed meat products, see the Healthy Living program.
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