13. The Countdown to 1...

The countdown is on. In a few days our baby will be one year old. 

We’re fielding questions about what we’re doing for his birthday. Truth is that this – his very first – is the birthday that is most about us rather than him. A celebration of surviving our first year as parents. A moment to look back at what was happening a year ago as we spent those final few days as a couple rather than a family.

In practical terms it means some changes too. Per NHS advice, we can stop sterilising his bottles. This has already felt slightly futile for the past few months as he crawls around inside and out, putting all kinds of sticks and soil in his mouth. 

And then there’s eating. We formally move from the stage where most of his nutrition and hydration comes from infant milk (formula in our case) to a stage where he’s expected to get all he needs from food, water, and cow’s milk. The shift here feels well underway, as he eats well, and other than really hot days where we force extra ones in, he’s been down to four and sometimes only three bottles of milk (nominally 180mls each but sometimes not finished) a day. He should shift from drinking from a bottle, to exclusively drinking from cups, with or without spouts. This change is underway, although he currently views a glass of water as a finger bowl in which to wash his hands…

That leaves one big change which really is exciting for me in my role as his personal chef, with my desire to feed him as much deliciousness as possible: the salt ban is over.

For babies under one, the advice is to try and exclude salt as much as possible. Not to zero, but close to it. The formula we use has a small amount of salt, and six bottles a day adds up to about half a gram. As we’ve introduced solids, we’ve held back on adding any salt, but allowed small amounts of a few things with low levels of salt – bread and the occasional piece of mozzarella or other low-salt cheese.

We’ve relaxed this a little as his first birthday approaches, mostly in allowing him more of our food when eating out. Cooking for him has still been a salt-free zone. It’s not that I’ve wanted to add the white stuff to his food, it’s more about all those delicious things I habitually use when cooking – soy sauce, fish sauce, parmesan, miso, Worcestershire sauce…. And all those things I love to eat like marmite, olives and kimchi.

I think of things he already loves which my palate sees as incomplete. White rice with butter, crying out for a dash of soy sauce. Pasta with spinach and creme fraiche, aching for a dusting of parmesan. White beans, begging for the addition of some vegetable stock powder during the cook. Tomato sauce, whose deliciousness would rise to the next level with a splash of Lea and Perrins. Green veg with rice, missing the satisfaction that a little miso would deliver.

Birthdays often mean cake. But we’re delaying big sugar exposure as long as possible. He’s an absolute fruit bat so he’s getting plenty of natural sweetness. He also has crazy amounts of energy, often at inappropriate times (like last night between 7pm at 10.30pm….). Adding more sugar into that mix is really not required!

And so instead of a cake I’m conjuring up ideas for a delicious salty birthday treat. A slice of toast, salted butter oozing into it, and a gleaming pink anchovy lying on top. Adding some smoked salmon to his scrambled eggs. We’ll get pastries and instead of just giving him one flaky layer from the outside, we’ll tear off a whole section, filling and all. Extra points if it’s the miso bacon swirl from Arôme bakery.

We’ll swing by a pizzeria for lunch, and tear him a piece beyond the crust to include a big dollop of cheesy tomato goodness. We might actually allow ourselves to eat a salty snack in front of him and maybe allow him a crisp to try.

For dinner we’ll mash miso butter into his vegetables. Jazz up green beans with a splash of fish sauce. Or maybe pasta with spinach, creme fraiche and a big sprinkling of parmesan melting into it. Ooh, even better: take one of his favourites to a new level… A bowl of white rice, slick with butter, topped with a slice of omelette, onto which I’ll drizzle some soy sauce as I put it in front of him. 

It’s going to be quite the day.

Except of course we won’t do all of that on day one. Or indeed on any day. Guidelines are that an infant should have no more than 2g of salt per day. I’m studying labels and doing calculations to set some limits.

Cow’s milk contains salt. If we give him 500ml a day, that’s over half a gram of salt, leaving less than 1.5g to play with. 

Marmite has 10.8g per 100g, with their definition of a portion (8g across two slices of toast) adding up to 0.86g. A smear on a finger of toast must be less than that – maybe 2g at most? I might need some scales with greater accuracy at low quantities. A 5g serving of miso – about a teaspoon? – is 0.6g of salt. The anchovies I have in the fridge will, when drained, have 4.6g of salt, so less than a gram per fillet. Fish sauce is 27.2g/100ml and Kikkoman soy sauce 16.3g. I must make sure my dashes are light. 30g of parmesan is half a gram of salt. 

It’s easy to see how his day’s allowance of milk, a smear of marmite on some breakfast toast, a dash of soy sauce on lunchtime rice and some pasta with parmesan in the evening could exceed the limit. 

I’ve used these ingredients for years, reaching for them hundreds, and in some cases thousands of times. Occasionally I mess up and push things a little salty, but the link from the intuition to the muscle memory is strong and usually I can get it right without thinking about it.

As we broaden out his diet, a new approach is needed. Firstly to keep his overall salt levels at a safe level, knowing that one day we’re a bit over will be fine as long as we are balanced out throughout the week. But also important is to ensure that he doesn’t need food to be salty for him to find it tasty. It’s really easy to push your palate through habituation, and sometimes you’re pushing it along a one way street. I, like many, have travelled down this way with chilli heat. I almost expect dishes to be spicy, and stock a range of ways to add this at the table when it’s not in the dish. I’m trying to keep this in check, so that I can still appreciate the pure fresh taste of seasonal asparagus, or a cracking green salad. But I still revert to spice most of the time. 

You can easily habituate your palate to salt, and to high levels of umami, and create an expectation that this is what food should taste like. So we want to stop short of that, and instead just enjoy being able to share more of our food, and to make some of his food just that tiny bit more delicious. Happy salty birthday.