Continuing on our tour of vegetables in child feeding, today we stop at Pumpkin and zucchini, which for its nutritional properties and easy digestion are suitable for baby consumption in complementary feeding after six months.
The Cucurbita genus, of the Cucurbitaceae family, comprises a group of species cultivated for their fruits, their flowers and their edible seeds, known as pumpkins, zucchini, ayotes (from Nahuatl ayotli), auyamas (Dominican Republic, Colombia and Venezuela) or zucchini, zucchini.
There is a great variety of species and hybrids, up to 850 different plants that produce large fruits and firm bark. Fruits such as melon and vegetables like the ones we discussed belong to this genre.
Within the Cucurbita species two subspecies can be distinguished: ovifer and pepo. The oviferous fruits are bitter in taste. Pepo are spherical or elongated fruits with a sweet taste. Here we place the pumpkin and zucchini.
We will know what are the nutritional properties of these two vegetables, as well as their varieties and their mode of preparation for feeding babies.
Zucchini in infant feeding
Zucchini, zucchini, zucchini, zucchini or Italian squash is one of the two varieties of Cucurbita pepo, an annual herbaceous plant of the Cucurbitaceae family native to the New World, whose immature fruit is used as food.
At present, its consumption is widespread in all Mediterranean countries, as well as in the Netherlands and North America. Morocco, Italy and Spain are the main producing countries.
The zucchini skin can be of various greenish, yellow and white flesh tones, they are easily peeled when immature harvested. You can eat raw and with skin in its most tender varieties, but to prepare the baby's porridge you have to Cook the peeled zucchini.
These are the main varieties of zucchini; In general, its nutritional properties are very similar:
- Dark type zucchini: samara is bright black; or Sofia is medium green.
- Light type zucchini: Grisson is light green with gray dots; or clarita are very light green.
- There is also a type of zucchini called "minicalabacín", very early harvest.
Zucchini, with a high water content (92%), is rich in minerals, especially potassium, vitamin C and β-carotene. It helps regulate bowel function. The fiber it contains allows you to prevent and improve cases of constipation. It is easily digested and is therefore suitable for the baby's diet.
Pumpkin in infant feeding
Pumpkin, ahuyama, auyama or squash (Cucurbita maxima) is a spontaneous annual herbaceous plant cultivated for its fruit, leaf, flower and seed. It is the berry fruit of the pumpkin and also belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family. Its consumption extended from Asia to Central America and, from there, it reached the entire continent.
In the fifteenth century, pumpkin was introduced in Europe, where it spread to a greater extent in countries with warmer weather. Currently, pumpkin is grown in hot and humid soils around the world.
The pumpkin has great variation in its shapes and color, it can be elongated or spherical, from green to intense orange, going through yellowish colors. The pulp is yellow-orange, dense, firm and sweet in texture
As in zucchini, the main component of pumpkin is water, which, together with its low carbohydrate content and almost negligible amount of fat, makes it a food with a low caloric intake.
It is a good source of fiber and in relation to the vitamins, pumpkin is rich in beta-carotene or provitamin A and vitamin C. It has appreciable amounts of vitamin E, folates and other B vitamins such as B1, B2, B3 and B6. All these vitamins are essential for good general condition, the immune system and development.
As for its mineral richness, pumpkin is a food rich in potassium, necessary for the transmission and generation of nerve impulse and for normal muscle activity. It also contains other minerals such as phosphorus (essential for the formation of bones and teeth), magnesium, iron and calcium, but in smaller quantities.
All this, together with its ease of digestion and the mild sweet taste, makes the pumpkin a food suitable for the baby's diet and suitable for the first porridge.
Pumpkin Varieties
The main pumpkin varieties They are summer and winter.
- Summer squash: variety of light skin (whitish, orange, green or yellow) and fine and soft seeds. It has a short shelf life.
- Winter squash: sweeter variety, but drier than summer, with lower water content and thicker skin. It is preserved for longer than summer thanks to the thickness of its skin.
There are also other varieties of pumpkin such as the pilgrim (vinatera), the American, the thick yellow of Paris, the Full of Naples, the Red of Etampes, the Spanish Green, the button and the zucchini of Brazil.
Preparation of pumpkin and zucchini
Both in the ripe variety of the pumpkin, with thick and hard crust, and in the zucchini, you have to peel the vegetables before boiling them in water or steam them for preparation. Zucchini, as they are immature fruits, have very soft seeds inside and cannot be separated, nor is it necessary to do so.
On the other hand, pumpkins do usually have large, hard nuggets, and they are easily separated: we will remove the seeds and filaments from the pumpkin before boiling it or cooking it for baby porridge (pumpkin seeds, which contain an edible pulp: we can dry and toast the seeds for the consumption of adults).
After peeling and washing the vegetables well, they are cut and cooked with little water because it retains the nutrients of the boiled vegetables and we can use it to make and enrich the porridge. Steamed, vegetables retain nutrients better.
Pumpkin and zucchini can be combined with other vegetables suitable for six months, such as peas, green beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, leeks ...
The cooking time depends on the hardness of the water we use and the type of pot, but the right measure is when they are very soft. The tender zucchini needs much less cooking time than the hard pumpkin. If several vegetables are cooked at the same time, zucchini can be added at the end, along with the peas that also take a short time to cook.
Once the porridge is made, you can add a teaspoon of raw olive oil to the mash when we are going to give it to the baby, but never salt, until after the year.
At six months the mash should be fine, but after 8 or 9 months we can leave some larger pieces, crushing the porridge less, so that the baby gets used to new textures, because in a few months he will be willing to chew solid.
Also from that age, that the baby take the pieces of cooked vegetables (cold or warm) and go sucking or nibbling them is possible, provided that we are next to them watching them. It's another way to taste these healthy foods, vegetables like pumpkin and zucchini in infant feeding.
