Health Benefits of Ginger for Babies

In many countries, ginger is a common spice added into various foods and drinks. While it has been common for adults to consume this spice, it could be a different thing. For your information, ginger belongs to one of the oldest known herbs and condiments in history. Besides being popular as culinary additive spice, it has been used as medicine.

Caution

The first important caution is about the amount of ginger you may give to your baby. Do not give too much, since this spice has too strong and pungent smell for your little one. So, you can start adding it to baby’s food as much as the size of an orange seed. Make sure to mix it well with the food.

For better taste, adults usually add honey into their ginger drinks. It’s ok as well as quite common, but not for baby. The main reason is because honey might contain spores of bacteria which can possibly endanger baby’s health.

Adding ginger into baby’s food is also claimed to be the better option instead of adding salt or sugar. You can introduce ginger to baby’s diet when solid foods are already introduced or start to be consumed. While solid foods are typically introduced by 6 months, ginger can be given when the baby reaches at least 8 months old of age.

Nutrition

Every 100g of ginger contains 74kcal energy, 2.6g protein, 17.23g carbohydrate, 45mg calcium, 1.16mg iron, 23mg magnesium, 556mg potassium, 40mg sodium, 44mg vitamin C, 0.25mg vitamin B6 and 13ug folate. Also, it contains 79g water.

Additionally, ginger contains various biochemical, including gingerol, beta-phellendrane,  camphene, curcumene, borneol, limonene, etc.

Health Benefits

For baby, the benefits of ginger include the relief from digestive issues as well as cough and cold. Like on adults, ginger is also useful as remedy from baby respiratory diseases such as influenza. Particular substance contained by ginger is useful to help the body to protect liver.

Basically, liver is a strong organ in the body but baby’s liver still might not be strong especially on the early months of his or her life. What about using ginger to deal with cough and cold? It’s easy. You can boil peeled ginger in the water and give that water to the baby later to drink.