Charlotte Stirling-Reed, a baby nutrition expert and author of How to Wean Your Baby, explains why starting with vegetables can make your baby’s weaning journey smoother and help them develop a healthy relationship with food from day one.
Weaning—introducing solid foods—can be a bit daunting, but at the heart of it, it’s all about experimenting! In the past, we were told to start with foods babies would easily accept, like rice pudding, baby porridge, and apple puree. These are all sweet or familiar in texture, much like the milk they’re used to. Babies are naturally drawn to sweet flavours, so they don’t need much convincing to enjoy things like apple or pear.
But here’s the thing: babies’ taste preferences are shaped early on, and what they’re exposed to now can influence how they eat later. This is where veg-led weaning comes in.
Why start with vegetables?
A research suggeststhat offering veggies as one of baby’s first foods, especially the bitter and savoury ones like broccoli or spinach, can encourage them to develop a taste for these flavours early on. This doesn’t mean your little one won’t ever turn into a picky toddler (we’ve all been there!), but studies show that babies who try a variety of veggies tend to eat more of them as they grow up.
That’s why many baby food brands and health campaigns, like the NHS's Start 4 Life, now recommend including less sweet vegetables right from the start. According to the NHS from around 6 months old, you should “include vegetables that aren’t so sweet, like broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach – this helps your baby get used to a range of flavours, not just the sweet ones like carrots and sweet potato.”
How to start veg-led Weaning
The veg-led weaning approach is where you kick your weaning journey off by offering a variety of single veggies for the first 10 days or so – choosing some bitter, savoury and neutral flavours are best in these first days.
This allows baby to try some completely new tastes and to experiment with flavours they’ve never had before. Ultimately this is in the hope that baby will become more familiar with savoury and bitter tastes, rather than just sweet tastes, and lead them to enjoy and accept more variety later in life... It's all about encouraging them to become a happy little eater in the future.
Of course initially babies are unlikely to be bowled over with the taste of broccoli, sprouts and cabbage, having had nothing but sweet milk for the first months of life! But this is perfectly normal as it can take up to 8-10 tastes before baby accepts new foods.
Top tips from Charlotte for babies’ first foods:
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Try mixing the green veggies with some of baby’s normal milk initially, to add familiarity
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Try to offer a range of different veggie tastes in those first weeks of weaning
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Don’t worry if not much actually gets into baby’s mouth and tummy initially; this stage is about getting used to the spoon and/or pieces of foods
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Even if baby is just touching, playing, smelling or licking their spoon/finger foods in those first few attempts – this is great as it all goes to help baby build up familiarity with these new foods
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Have fun with veggies – get the camera out for those facials – wrinkling their nose, and pulling a disgruntled face is completely normal and certainly doesn’t mean that baby doesn’t like the food which is being offered – it’s just new and sometimes surprising!
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Remember that introducing baby to new foods will take time – don’t expect baby to accept them overnight. It’s a gradual learning experience and all babies are so different when it comes to the acceptance of new foods.
Whichever way you decide to wean your baby is absolutely fine – all babies are so different and if you’re offering purees, finger foods or both that’s great – you'll find what works best for you. Also many parents decide to go along the more traditional route of offering baby rice and fruits, that’s absolutely safe to do too.
About the expert
Charlotte Stirling-Reed is “The Baby & Child Nutritionist” and is a Registered Nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition. Charlotte is also an author and mum to little foodies Raffy and Adaline, and owner of consultancy, SR Nutrition. It’s her mission in her work to give parents confidence in feeding their children.