Spinach Puree for Babies: Recipe and Benefits

Spinach puree is easy to prepare and provides a large amount of vitamins and antioxidants. Learn more in today's article.

Thanks to spinach puree, babies can introduce a large amount of high-quality nutrients into their bodies, which will greatly benefit their development. This food can be consumed as early as the sixth month of life, always as a complement to breast milk.

Before starting, it’s important to ensure the presence of vegetables in the diet on a regular basis. These foods contain in their interior vitamins and antioxidants that are necessary to prevent some chronic and complex diseases over the years.

Ingredients for spinach puree

To prepare an exquisite baby spinach puree, the following ingredients will be necessary:

• 1 bunch of spinach.
• 1 1/3 ounces of milk.
• 1 teaspoon of butter
• 1 pinch of salt (if the child is older than one year).

It’s always best for the spinach to be fresh. It’s true that the frozen version is considered of good quality from the nutritional point of view, but in this recipe, you’ll obtain a superior result at an organoleptic level. Besides, it’s always healthier to opt for raw leaves than for those that have been industrially manipulated.

Step-by-step instructions

First of all, you have to wash the spinach thoroughly and then place it in a pot with boiling water for at least 5 minutes.

When the cooking process is over, you have to introduce the vegetables to the pitcher of the blender and add the milk. Then, blend everything until you obtain a smooth paste.

Once this point is passed, add the butter and the salt, and blend again until obtaining a homogeneous result.

From here on, you only need to check the temperature and serve this dish that’s specially adapted to introduce as your baby’s midday meal.

Also, in this recipe, you can also include some foods with high protein content, such as chicken breast or some pieces of fish in order to enrich the nutritional density.

Benefits of spinach puree

The consumption of spinach puree can produce a series of benefits, as long as it’s introduced in the context of a balanced and varied diet.

We’re talking about a preparation that stands out mainly for its fiber and vitamin C content, a nutrient that’s been shown to promote immune function. Its regular consumption reduces the incidence of infectious diseases and improves its symptomatological control.

At the same time, spinach also contains iron inside. This element helps prevent anemia, a disease that reduces the efficiency of oxygen transport through the blood. However, it has a rather limited absorption rate, which increases when the mineral is consumed together with vitamin C.

Finally, spinach is a source of phytonutrients. These substances have the ability to neutralize the production of free radicals and their subsequent accumulation in the body’s tissues. This mechanism prevents the development of many chronic and complex diseases, as evidenced by research published in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

However, it’s not only spinach that should be included in your baby’s diet, but several different types of vegetables. This way, all the vitamins and phytochemicals present in them can be better utilized, which will have a positive impact on the functioning of the infant body.

Prepare spinach baby puree at home

As you’ve seen, it’s easy to prepare a great spinach baby food at home. It’s a recipe that your little one will accept and it will improve the quality of their diet. Of course, until the first year of life, it’s not advisable to add salt or to stop breastfeeding, as breastmilk is still your baby’s main food.

Finally, we need to emphasize the importance of instilling good habits from the early stages of life. Children are much more likely to acquire them easily and reproduce them in the future. This will protect the body from the development of chronic and complex pathologies that can cause damage to health and alter their wellbeing.