Olive oil for children: an ally in infant feeding!
Depending on how old you are and where you have grown up, your childhood snack memories are very likely to be associated with bread with oil. Extra virgin olive oil is one of the pillars of our Mediterranean diet and children can also benefit from its main benefits, such as its High content of oleic acid, vitamin E and its antioxidant functionE. In fact, from the age of 6 months, when the baby begins the complementary feeding, pediatricians talk about introducing a tablespoon of raw olive oil in the porridge that admits it for the benefits that this entails.
How to give olive oil to children? Insert it into your diet
Once the complementary feeding has started, usually from six months, Babies can start taking olive oil with their porridge. In a Guide to complementary feeding, the Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics recommends Add a tablespoon of raw olive oil to the porridge that admits it. It is more than recommended that this oil be of the highest quality, that is, extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). This scoop will improve the organoleptic quality of the puree, making these preparations more pleasant for the baby, in addition to providing oleic acid together with tocopherols and antioxidant phenolic compounds.
In the following stages, when children begin to consume a more varied diet, the intake of extra virgin olive oil increases. Below, we indicate the recommended doses in the I study olive oil in infant feeding, which collects the amounts indicated by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP):
How many tablespoons of olive oil can a child take?
- from six months and started the continuation feed, introduce a scoop (less than 10 milliliters) of extra virgin olive oil in the purees that accept it, generally, of vegetables and meat.
- from 2 years and throughout the preschool and school stage it is recommended to ingest 3-4 daily servings of EVOO, linked to the reduction of fat intake to 30%, but with 15% monounsaturated fatty acids.
It is interesting to note that extra virgin olive oil is also Highly recommended during pregnancy. As the aforementioned study states, fatty acids are involved in healthy growth. For this reason, as the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) indicates in the Mediterranean diet, the mother must eat between 3 and 6 servings of olive oil, both during pregnancy and during breastfeeding.
What oil is good for children?
So that children can benefit from all the advantages of olive oil, it is important that the one they consume is Extra Virgin Olive Oil. From there, everything depends on the variety that parents consume at home, although as a general trend, children tend to better tolerate the milder ones, such as arbequina, than intense ones such as picual.
Children’s tastings for an audience that is also demanding
The children also carry a small gourmet inside. They perfectly differentiate a Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil of a lower quality oil. At Beloleum we have checked it first-hand with our children’s tastings. Kids love it as much as we liked when we were little! Do you wonder which one is usually your favorite? Due to their softness, they tend to opt for the Beloleum Arbequina.
It is clear that the children of the Beloleum family also consume our premium EVOO from Aragon. As an anecdote, on a vacation, we ran out of olive oil and went shopping at a nearby supermarket, where there were not many options and we had to buy one from another brand. We tried to “cheat” one of the little ones in the family, 7 years old, with this new oil, but she didn’t strain! And it is that, as we have indicated, children are as demanding as adult palates.
Benefits of olive oil for children
The benefits of EVOO for children are the same as for adults and are based on Composition of this juice 100% of olives: Oleic acid, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, vitamin E, provitamin A and phenolic compounds, which act as antioxidant substances.
between the Most interesting olive oil benefits for children Its arterial vasodilator effect, improved calcium absorption or its anti-inflammatory effects. In view of adulthood, it is important to note that Lowers cholesterol LDL (known colloquially as “the bad”) and increases HDL (“good” cholesterol).
For children with difficulties eating, it is a good option for Make the dishes more pleasant on the palate. Olive oil is also interesting for the Constipation in babies and children, since it is a natural remedy to regulate intestinal transit.
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