The Nourished Baby
by Dr Julie Bhosale
Bateman $39.99
Among some of
the most worrying decisions parents have to make concern when to shift their
baby onto solids, and then what solids to give them. Evidence shows that these
decisions have potentially significant lifelong consequences.
This takes place
against an increasingly frightening global picture of children’s health. Across
both developed and developing countries, childhood obesity continues to soar,
along with iron deficiency, and the beginning signs for type 2 diabetes and
heart disease. In New Zealand, one in three children is either overweight or
obese.
While undertaking research for her
doctoral thesis at AUT, Dr Julie Bhosale saw this with her own eyes. She
measured children who, at the age of 10, were overweight and had high blood
pressure. ‘The fact that a child just a few years older than my elder son had
one of the biggest red flags for a heart attack before they were even in
high-school was hard for me to comprehend,’ says Julie.
Your child does
not have to be one of those statistics, though, as the first year of life
offers a unique window in which the foods your babies start on lay down their
nutritional and metabolic blueprint.
‘The importance
of establishing healthy habits in the first 12 months of a baby’s life cannot
be stressed enough. How our babies are nourished with food, sleep and movement
during this time sets them up for life. To me, true nourishment is the
interplay of these cornerstones of food, sleep and movement, along with a sense
of purpose (which tends to come slightly later in life),’ explains Julie.
While these key
foundations of wellbeing are discussed in The
Nourished Baby, the book’s primary focus is the food we feed our babies in
that first year.
‘Food is
medicine. The nutrients from natural, wholefoods have been carefully designed
by Mother Nature to provide what we need to not only sustain life, but to
thrive — without the presence of the lifestyle diseases we see today,’ says
Julie.
The Nourished Baby is heavily evidence-based and draws on a
lot of research, but Julie’s aim has been to make the contents as
reader-friendly, simple and accessible as possible.
Julie is also
willing to tackle the big issues facing families today, including misleading labelling
and marketing employed by some baby-food manufacturers. ‘I know the impact that
first foods have on a baby and their health, and am frustrated at baby-food
companies promoting their products as “healthy” homemade food. When I conducted
my own research on products in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, the results
were a huge surprise — in short, I’m check-mate on this billion-dollar
industry.’
Today, Dr Julie
Bhosale is an internationally-renowned family wellbeing and nutrition expert,
author and speaker, whose 2015 viral postpartum body blog has been read by
millions around the globe. She has been on national television, demanding for
women to be supported in their choice of how they feed their babies.
In 2015, Julie also
completed her doctoral thesis, gave birth to her second son and released her
first cookbook, Healthy, Easy Dinners for
Busy Mums. She helps mums and families all over the world, touring both
locally and overseas. She is lecturer at AUT and an active researcher, and is
involved in numerous projects affecting family wellbeing and wider communities.
Dr Julie Bhosale
is real and authentic in exploring the challenges we face as parents. A lover
of coffee and chocolate, she knows the world is not perfect, nor that what you
see in the highlight reels on social media are necessarily representative of
everyday family life. You can trust her advice is practical, realistic and at
the same time providing much-needed guidance for our families to flourish.
