This past Saturday I had another opportunity to listen to Dr. Greene, an amazing, world renowned pediatrician, speak at a MetroMoms event here in Dallas. (You may remember I had the honor of guest blogging for him at the beginning of the year.) Just as he did last year, he inspired me to get more involved in controlling what my family is exposed to and, mainly, how and what my family eats.
I was so excited to hear about his new White Out campaign and am thrilled to get behind it. It’s simple goal- “Let every child’s first grain be a whole grain.” It’s a small change that doesn’t have to cost anything, and it can make a huge difference in the types of eating habits we are helping our children establish from the time they begin solids. Dr. Greene, myself, and every other person who supports the White Out campaign simply want to replace the standard white rice cereal (that the majority of infants in this country are given as a first food) with a whole grain, even if that’s just simply switching to brown rice cereal.
Instead of trying to explain to you all why this is so important and how it really can make that big of a difference, I’ll let Dr. Greene do the talking.
I’m doing my part to help spread the word, and I’m asking you to do the same. Watch the video, like the Facebook page, and tell your friends. If you tell just 2 parents, and they tell just 2, and so on, we can reach our goal of eliminating white rice cereal as baby’s first food in this country in a year. It’s so simple! The campaign officially launched today and I can’t wait to see how much steam it picks up over the next year.
Check back in next Thanksgiving and tell me how you fed your children more whole grains. I know I plan to do the same.
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4 comments
This is a great idea, and I totally support replacing white rice/bread/etc with whole grains, and it’s regular practice around my house. Costco sells these awesome microwave brown rice/quinoa mix packs that DS devours! Unfortunately when it comes to the boxes of baby cereals… the pickings are slim at my grocery store! I suppose next time around I’ll have to ask the grocery manager if he can get brown rice in stock… gerber does make it.
I’m grateful that I educated myself on whole grain foods for children and was prepared when my baby first started solids. We started him on Happy Bellies brown rice cereal (that last about 2 days because he hated it) and quickly transitioned to Happy Bellies organic oatmeal. White rice was never an option in our house.
I never even thought about that rice cereal and we pretty much only eat brown rice and whole grain pasta. I think I bought the brown version, but I don’t know for sure.
Such a simple thing to do, too. Switching out all the pasta was easy, but I no longer eat spaghetti because I hate the texture of whole grain spags. The other shapes are fine, so we just stick with those.
I wish those mini-shapes Barilla makes were in a whole grain version. So much easier to feed her small ones instead of having to cut up penne.
[…] (In case you are thinking of starting solids, and want to start with cereal, please review this excellent post by Jill from Baby Rabies about rice cereal and Dr. Green’s White Out campaign, to get our […]