Have you been wondering how and when you should introduce eggs and milk products to your baby?
In this video I’m going to talk about the safe ways to offer these potentially allergenic
foods, and the best age to introduce eggs and milk products to decrease your child’s
risk for developing an allergy to these foods.
If this is our first time meeting, I’m Dr. Belousov.
I’m a board certified pediatrician and I equip parents with knowledge, so they can
care for their children with confidence.
Many parents are nervous about introducing the common allergenic foods to their baby,
because of fear of an allergic reaction.
But delaying the introduction of the allergenic foods can increase the child’s risk of becoming
allergic to them.
So it’s to your child’s benefit to get exposed to them early on in the food introduction
process.
That’s why I put together this video series to show you how simple it is to introduce
these foods to a baby.
This is the third video in the series.
If you’d like to check out the other videos, I have them linked at the end of this video.
First let’s talk about what age you should introduce eggs and milk products to your baby.
For many years parents were advised to avoid exposing their child to the common food allergens
in their first several years of life.
However recent studies show that delaying introduction can actually increase a baby’s
risk of developing allergies to them.
On the other hand early introduction and frequent exposure can prevent the development of allergy
to these foods.
Most babies are developmentally ready to safely start taking solids around 6 months of age
and when they’re showing all the signs of readiness to eat.
You can start off introducing several of the less allergenic foods.
Then you can begin introducing the common allergenic foods to your baby one at a time,
even in the first week of starting solids.
It’s to your child’s benefit to get exposed to the common allergenic foods early on in
the food introduction process.
In my video titled “Example of Week 1 of Starting Baby On Solids” and my video titled
“How To Create Balanced Meals & Expose Baby To A Variety Of Foods,” I go through examples
of a food introduction approach that will allow you to more systematically expose your
baby to a variety of foods, including the common allergenic foods.
They’re linked up here if you’d like to check them out.
So how can you safely introduce eggs and milk products to your baby?
You’ll need to pick a good time in the morning or afternoon to introduce the new food.
I don’t recommend introducing the common allergenic foods close to bedtime so you give
yourself several hours of awake time to observe for a potential allergic reaction.
Avoid introducing two new foods on the same day, that way if your child has an allergic
reaction, there won’t be any confusion surrounding which one was the cause.
When introducing eggs or a milk product for the first time, out of an abundance of caution
it’s recommended to spend several days giving the new allergenic food, and holding off on
offering any other new foods.
However on those days it is fine to bring back foods that your baby had previously and
did well with.
There are different ways you can prepare eggs before offering them to your baby.
You can hard boil the egg and turn it into a puree consistency by mashing or blending
up the egg white and yolk together with some breastmilk or formula.
Depending on how much your baby is eating, offer half or the entire egg for the meal.
It’s safe to refrigerate the other half and offer it at another meal of the day or
the next day.
You can also fry the egg in a pan.
First add a little oil, or if you’re using butter, be sure that your baby has been exposed
to a milk product several times already without having an allergic reaction.
After breaking the egg into the frying pan, I like to break the yolk and mix it with the
egg white.
Once it becomes cooked on one side, flip the egg over to cook the other side all the way
through.
Likewise you can offer half or the entire egg depending on how much your baby is eating.
You can mash up the cooked egg into a puree consistency by adding some breastmilk or formula
to reach the desired consistency.
Another option is to cut up the cooked egg into strips about the thickness of an adult
pinky finger, and 2 to 3 inches long, so the baby can grab them more easily to bring to
the mouth to self feed.
As your baby gets older, you can introduce baked products and other multi-ingredient
foods that contain eggs in them to continue to expose your child to this allergenic food.
When it comes to offering milk products to the baby, we don’t replace breastmilk or
formula with cow's milk until the baby turns 12 months of age.
But introducing products like yogurt and cheese are great options to expose the baby to this
potentially allergenic food.
Since yogurt already comes in the consistency of a puree, that's the easy one to start with.
I recommend giving full fat plain cow’s milk yogurt or full fat plain greek yogurt
that’s sold in the refrigerator, not the baby yogurt that’s sold on the store shelves.
As your baby masters taking solids, you can also offer foods like cottage cheese, ricotta
cheese or shredded pasteurized hard cheeses to expose the baby to other milk products.
You may be wondering how much and how often you need to offer egg and milk products to
your baby.
At this time there are no explicit recommended guidelines for the amount that a baby should
take.
In addition, the exact amount of the allergen needed to decrease a child’s risk for developing
an allergy to that food is still unknown.
The EAT study showed that early introduction of several of the common allergenic foods,
including eggs and milk, decreased the risk for developing an allergy to these foods.
In the study they asked parents to offer the equivalent of around 2 grams of each allergenic
food protein twice a week, for a total of 4 grams per week.
They had babies take 40 to 60 grams of cow's milk yogurt twice a week.
They also had babies take half of a hard boiled egg two times a week for at least 5 weeks.
Those amounts were effective in decreasing the risk for developing allergy to these foods.
Children who are at higher risk for developing food allergies are those who have eczema and/or
were diagnosed with an egg allergy, or have a family history of allergic conditions.
These babies especially were shown to benefit greatly from early and frequent exposure to
allergenic foods in their diet as a strategy to potentially prevent them from developing
food allergies.
And even if your child doesn’t have any risk factors for food allergies, delayed introduction
can increase the risk of becoming allergic to these foods.
Therefore there’s no benefit to delaying the introduction of the allergenic foods to
your baby.
In upcoming years I believe we will have clear guidelines on exactly how many grams of the
allergenic food to give and how many times a week.
If we follow the amounts that were shown to be effective in the EAT study, you can aim
for a target of giving around 2 grams of the allergenic food protein at least two times
a week.
You will be able to achieve this by offering at least half of a large egg two times a week.
And for milk products, offer 40 to 60 grams of yogurt, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese
or a shredded pasteurized hard cheese at least two times a week.
After repeated exposures and as your child masters taking solids, you can start preparing
multi ingredient meals containing eggs and milk products.
Be sure to continue to expose your baby to the common allergenic foods on a weekly basis,
since regular exposure is key to allergy prevention.
And even if you aren’t able to give as much as I’m recommending, your child stands to
benefit from the consistency of being exposed to these allergenic foods in their diet.
If you’d like to know how an allergic reaction to a food would present itself, and what to
do in the event that your baby has an allergic reaction, I have a separate video that goes
into detail on that.
It’s linked up here, if you’d like to check it out.
The videos on how to introduce the other common allergenic foods are linked up here as well.
See you in the next video.