Baby Led Weaning Vegan Cookbook: 50 Vegan Recipes the Whole Family will Love

By Cathleen Woods

Baby led weaning is choosing to feed your baby real, whole foods rather than pureeing food into traditional baby food. I learned about it when my oldest daughter was 4 months old and it was the first time I’d ever heard of such a feeding style. I've since fed each of my three kids with this method and they are truly amazing eaters-- will try anything as long as it's vegan!

The idea freaked me out at first, but it also intrigued me. How could she possibly eat a whole pear without choking? I’d only ever seen parents spoon-feeding their babies from jars or homemade pureed steamed vegetables. Could it possibly be safe to let her pick up her own food and eat as much as she wanted?

But it struck a chord with me. I believe in real, whole vegan food and its power to transform a human. I wanted my child to love and respect healthy food without having an emotional attachment to it that caused her to overeat as an adult. It makes so much more sense for her to decide for herself how much to eat, rather than me randomly deciding she’s done.

It also turns out people have been feeding their children this way since time eternal. It’s actually more of a modern tradition to puree everything before giving it to a baby learning to eat.

After I read more about it, I dove right in. I found a few great books and websites about baby led feeding (a better term in my opinion as it really has nothing to do with actual weaning off breastmilk,) but I could not find much about people feeding just plant foods. I had to really research to make sure I gave her everything she needed and was balancing her diet well.

There was no book on Baby Led Weaning for Vegans, but now there is. This has 50 completely vegan recipes that you can serve to any age person, from 6 months on up.

These are healthy recipes we use all the time and love and all can be whipped up in under an hour, from snacks and salads and soups to beans and patties and whole grain dishes.

Some of our favorites are PB&J smoothies, fettucine alfredo with shiitake bacon, and oozy vegan mac-n-cheese. Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cathleen Woods
• Release date: Nov 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370793556

Cathleen Woods

Founder of Vegan-Nutritionista.com and author of:Baby Led Weaning for VegansVegan Christmas CookiesVegan Cooking for BeginnersA Fresh New Vegan YouVegan Meal Plans for Fall and WinterVegan Meal Plans for Spring and SummerThe Vegan Bread Box

Book preview

When I was a brand new parent, there was little about which I felt completely confident. There are dozens of subconscious decisions that you make daily that at first feel monumental.

I remember holding my perfect newborn and feeling almost paralyzed with the fear that any one of those choices would lead us down a new path and wondering if it would bring out the best version of my baby possible.

The intensity of that new responsibility was overwhelming, but it relaxed over time as she got older and I knew I could never be anywhere close to perfect in my parenting. All I could really do was educate myself on different options and go with my gut.

One of the very best decisions we made, and one that was instinctive and simple for me, was how our kids would eat. I knew I wanted them to be open-minded about food, able to eat in restaurants without major embarrassment, and to be in charge of how much they ate.

Those were my objectives before having kids, and as with many of those judgments we make when watching new parents as non-parents ourselves, it doesn’t always end up working out the way we want.

One of my favorite lines from Sex and the City was when Charlotte and Trey tell each other the lie all expecting parents tell each other in order to procreate, that their children would be different. I can’t tell you how many things I thought I’d never do that I ended up doing, and often loving, when I was finally a parent.

But food was different. It was remarkably simple for me. And calm; without struggle.

One of the main reasons for this is because I learned about a method of feeding children called Baby Led Weaning. It’s kind of a silly name as it has nothing to do with weaning.

None of my children weaned off breastmilk until they were at least 3 years old, 2.5 years after they started eating solid food. A more appropriate title would be Baby Led Eating.

I didn’t have a ton of experience watching mothers feed their children, and all I was used to seeing was this frenetic pureeing and spoon-feeding dance between parent and child. That progressed to the cutting into tiny pieces of food and then shortly thereafter to the chicken nuggets and plain pasta phase, often accompanied by a parent cooking a second meal for their child.

I read about Baby Led Weaning and parents feeding their babies what they were eating for dinner and it was a light bulb moment for me. YES! That’s exactly what I’d wanted. I wanted my children to love food in the same way I do and I didn’t want to create food struggles in my children that manifested in aversions or worse, disorders, as adults.

I would be in charge of what and where they ate, and they would be in charge of how much. I hope that later in life this means they will choose the what and where in a healthy way.

The basic premise of Baby Led Weaning is that you give your baby real food and over a period of many months they learn how to get it to their mouth, chew it (even without teeth), put it to the back of their mouth, and swallow it.

Yes, the swallow it is the part that gave me pause too. Wouldn’t this put them at a bigger risk of choking? There is nothing scarier than the prospect of your child in that type of danger, especially if it’s a choice you’re making that puts them in that position.

From what I read, children who eat this way are actually less likely to choke than a child fed purees because when you eat a puree you suck and swallow rather than chew, so when they transition to those tiny chunks of food they suddenly have to manipulate their mouth in a different way. If they start with something that needs to be gummed they always know food needs to go down this way rather than being slurped.

I’ve heard from mothers who fed purees that there’s always a scary period of gagging and sometimes choking.

I personally did not experience any choking, but we did have gagging. There’s a big difference. Choking means there’s little or no air getting past the piece of food. With gagging, it means the food has reached the gag reflex, which on babies is near the middle of their tongue, not as close to