Is rice cereal the best first food for babies?

Watch Jay Gordon, MD's video on Is rice cereal the best first food for babies?...
Is rice cereal the best first food for babies? | Kids in the House
KidsInTheHouse the Ultimate Parenting Resource
Kids in the House Tour

Is rice cereal the best first food for babies?

Comment
92
Like
92
Transcription: 
Rice cereal is not the best first food for a baby at six months of age. And it certainly is not a good first food at three or four months of age, which used to be traditional. The main reason that we gave rice as a first food was that we thought babies needed extra iron and it is easy to bind iron to rice. But in fact, rice also binds up a baby. The best to get a constipated baby is to use rice cereal as the first food. The best first foods would be fruits and vegetables, fresh, pureed, organic, and rice cereal a month or two later. And there is a new controversy about brown rice syrup. The U.S. government has declared that there is too much arsenic in organic brown rice syrup. And that question remains up in the air.

Watch Jay Gordon, MD's video on Is rice cereal the best first food for babies?...

Transcript

Expert Bio

More from Expert

Jay Gordon, MD

Pediatrician

Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, IBCLC - In the middle of his residency training, pediatrician Jay Gordon took an unusual step. Deciding that he needed greater knowledge about nutrition, vitamins, and alternative medicine in order to practice medicine the way he wanted to, Dr. Gordon took a Senior Fellowship in Pediatric Nutrition at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City. After his residency at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Dr. Gordon joined the teaching attending faculty at UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Intensely interested in infant nutrition and breastfeeding, Dr. Gordon is the first male physician to sit for and pass the International Board of Lactation Certification Exam and has served on the Professional Advisory Board of La Leche League for 24 years.

In addition to treating patients, he participates in the training of medical students and residents, lectures all over the world, writes books, and writes a monthly column for “Fit Pregnancy” magazine. He has contributed to “New York Parent,” “Parenting” magazine and has been quoted in the L.A. Times, New York Times, and The London Times.

Dr. Gordon’s first book, the well-received Good Food Today, Great Kids Tomorrow, offers a life-changing plan for families who want to make dramatic changes in health and fitness through nutrition. Brighter Baby examines the positive effect that attachment parenting, combined with infant massage, has on children’s health and intelligence. Other releases include: Good Night! The Parents’ Guide to the Family Bed and Hug Your Baby, a Gentle Guide through the First Year, which was released summer, 2002. He also authored Listening To Your Baby: A New Approach to Parenting Your Newborn, which still gets great reviews from parents. His most recent book is The ADD and ADHD Cure, the Natural Way to Treat Hyperactivity and Refocus Your Child.

When the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Television and the Media named Dr. Gordon “the most influential doctor in America,” they were referring, tongue-in-cheek, to Dr. Gordon’s role, as the medical script consultant, in eliminating lollipops from the office of “Doctor Weston,” lead character on the sitcom “Empty Nest.”

After two years of consulting on television scripts, sets, and ideas, Dr. Gordon was named CBS TV’s Medical Consultant for Children’s programming. He also worked for five years on ABC Television as the on-air medical correspondent for the “Home Show,” and continues to consult regularly for television and movies. He’s appeared on Fox 11 News, ABC’s 20/20 and most recently on Larry King Live. 

Dr. Gordon contributed and wrote the forward to Smart Medicine for a Healthy Child and The Encyclopedia of Vitamins and Supplements (both published in 1999), is pediatric consultant for “Fit Pregnancy” magazine and a frequent contributor to “Parents,” “Parenting,” and other media outlets.
 Busy as he is, Dr. Gordon finds that his most challenging job is “being a good husband and the best possible parent to my 22 year-old daughter.”

More Parenting Videos from Jay Gordon, MD >
Enter your email to
download & subscribe
to our newsletter