Snack and Food for 1 Year Old Without Many Teeth

Avocado is really easy to gum and packed with healthy fat and vitamins. Try tofu, also easy to gum and packed with nutrients, just dice it from the package; most babies love it. Roast a sweet potato in the oven or cook in the microwave, mash with a little butter and nutmeg, super sweet for little taste buds. For dinners I'd try hearty stews like lentil and vegetable barley. You can find lots of recipes online that can also be adapted for the family like on wholesomebabyfood.com. You can also mash shredded cheese and other veggies into mashed potato. One of my daughter's favorites at that age was mashed potato/carrot/broccoli with cheddar cheese.

Avocados are the best, naturally soft and super nutritious. Regular oatmeal, you can pulse it in the food processor to make the pieces smaller to start. Cottage cheese, soft tofu (if allergies not a concern), sweet potatoes, peas, rice, grated cheese (less scary for me than tiny cubes). If she is picky about new flavors, try adding it a bit at a time to something she likes, like smashing a bit of avocado with banana, then reduce the amount of banana gradually over a few meals. Hope this helps!

Try baby Goldfish instead of teddy grahams. They are smaller and easier to chew up. Also cereal is good like Cheerios in all varities and Ritz crackers. She should probably be able to hold it and chew on it. They dissolve pretty quickly.

I would keep giving her finger food at every meal. Part of it she just needs to continue to be exposed to it and realize that she is supposed to eat it. My son was slow to warm up to finger food and one day he just decided he was done with baby food. I would give her little bits of your dinner every night and just keep at it. She will figure it out. It's still within the normal range to eat purees until about 16-18 months, so don't worry too much.

Also, try peas and green beans cut up...my son loves those! You can also try really delicious fatty foods like cut up sausage and cheese and also avocados, those are a bit harder to pick up but they are really mushy so you can cut them a bit bigger so they're easier to grasp.

Toast, noodles, pasta w/sauce, tender tiny chicken bits, mashed potatoes, mashed up, cooked veggies like carrots, soft french fries or sweet potatoes, etc -- basically the stuff that's in the Stage 3's is table food--but soft--use that as a guide.
I've seen kids with less teeth than that gnaw a bagel! It's amazing what they can sometimes manage--but I was more like you--concerned about choking.

She's a gummer.
Watch the elderly around yu.
What do they eat?
Check with the dietician/cook at a nursing home or hospital.
Ask for imnformation int he right places, and it will all fall into place.

Dont let fear of her choking remove opportinities to explore. Be with her when trying new foods. Also, hot dogs have been a favorite of almost everybody. They are very controversial also. Some say they will choke your child faster than anythingg. Some say it was the only food their child enjoyed.

Yuo have to be willing to teach and watch waithout a panic.

Stella d'ioro bread sticks are good because they are thicker and easier for little ones to hold , plus because they are long they tend to suck on them rather than push them into their mouths , Ritz crackers also go soft when sucked. Large strawberries are good , pancakes , toasted bagels/english muffins , cooked pasta with a variety of sauces and soft cooked veggies mixed in , rice , sweet potato fries (very easy to make your own). Really anything you eat but cooked a little longer to make it softer , so many babies do not like stage 3 foods because of the sloppy texture with a few lumps , but will eat plenty of real food , so I would skip the baby food and move on to real food.

Try spagetti o's, graham crackers, cherios, toddler puffs, etc. Try canned beans and veggies. Any soft food in one of those baby food sacks you can get from the store to prevent gagging . You can also chop up anything the families eating small enough like 3rd baby foods so the baby can eat it .

I have a gagger too with very few teeth. He's 13 months and has I think 5 teeth right now. I don't have the time to be spoon feeding him anymore, so I've had to make due with what I can find. Here's what we give him:
- Rice cakes - awesome, you can just give her the whole thing and they sort of dissolve
- Puffs or any of those Gerber Graduates snacks - Target has a generic version of these now so they're not so expensive, and they're surprisingly low in sodium
- Digitini pasta (not sure how to spell that) - it's tiny pasta - boil some up and keep it in the fridge - my little guy would even gag on macaroni
- String cheese - cut it in half lengthwise and cut it again to make four long sticks, then slice crosswise into tiny cubes
- Bananas - just dropped him off at day care and she gave him the whole thing! Guess he can handle that!
- Toast - put some butter and jelly (even peanut butter if you're cool with that) and cube it up
- Goldfish - they dissolve or crumble pretty quickly
- Mum mums
- Peas
- Green beans cut into tiny pieces
- Pears/Peaches/KiwI
- Melon (watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew) cut up a bunch of this and keep it in the fridge for easy use

That's all I can think of for now, but really anything that's super soft or easily crumbles. He still gags all the time, but it's getting better!!! Good luck!

Our 13 month old son only has 5 teeth, but he eats almost everything that we eat. For snacks he loves the Gerber yogurt puffs and cereal puffs. He will also eat crackers of any kind. If it is a small cracker like Teddy Grahams that I think might be hard to chew I break them in half. He also loves fruit-bananas, peaches, pears, apples, stawberries. With smaller fruits or crunchy fruits we cut it into small pieces. With things like peaches he can hold onto a slice and take small bites. He also eats cereal like cheerios and kix. For meals he eats bread, meat, veggies. We grill or steam veggies-mushrooms, carrots, peas, beans,squash- and just make sure it is cut into small pieces. He loves chicken! He also loves little pieces of bread dipped in soup. We will dip it for him. He will eat rice and noodles too. There really are very few things we eat that we don't give him--grapes, tomato, spicy food. It's pretty amazing what they can eat with no teeth! When he was first starting to eat table food I would use a food chopper to cut it into small pieces.

Gerber has these "Puffs" that I always gave to my kids. They melt so fast and never had an issue with them. They come in different flavors. They also have wheels that are so close, and things that look like stars that work too.
http://www.gerber.com/AllStages/Products/ProductLine_Deta...

Earth's Best has some great snacks that are soft and easy to "chew". My 10 mo old likes the graham sticks, but I break them up into smaller pieces. he also LOVES toast! Again, I just tear it up into small pieces. Here's a list of what he eats. He never ate baby food, he absolutely refused it. I just cut everything up into tiny pieces and he does fine! If it's a veggie, I just make sure it's cooked till smooshy.

green beans (really any kind of beans)
rice
dry toast
strawberries
peaches
pears
bananas
peas
carrots
squash and zuccini
applesauce
chicken (he's only had it once but loved it)
potatoes (not fries, he likes all other kinds, mashed, roasted, baked, grilled)
grapes (peeled and cut up tiny)
french toast
scrambled eggs
avacados
tomatoes
pasta

He's pretty much eating what we eat now, so I may not have listed everything. I tried thinking of a variety of what he's been eating. He refused food until he was almost 9 months old, but now he eats everything! Allergies don't run in our families, so I'm not as concerned. If I introduce something new, I just make sure to watch him for a couple days. Yogurt is the only thing he hasn't done well with.

now is the season for PUMPKIN and SQUASH. Bake all sorts of pumpkins at the grocery store. They are yummy and easy to bake all at once, then take out of the oven and peel and store in snack bags in the freezer. My son loved eating pumpkin when he was about one.

Also - I am big on eating a lot of protein. At this age, I also gave my son lots of beans with grilled chicken bits in it. Either a can of beans or fresh beans -- put in a blender/food processor and blend w/ some bean juice or olive oil. Toss in some diced chicken and blend a little more. Sometimes I'd even add some cheese on top.

I'd make mac-n-cheese-n-chick too -- just made mac n cheese and then tossed in some finely chopped chicken for protein. My son loved it.

Honestly, you're sabotaging your efforts to get good nutrition for her by continuing to feed her baby food. Even the stage three stuff takes very little effort. At this age, the extrusion, or gag reflex, should be entirely gone. Very likely then, she gags because she's sensitive to textures; and again, feeding her pureed foods only exacerbates the problem.

At this age, she should be eating mostly the same things you eat, with the obvious exception of very chewy foods like meat. Offer small chunks of cooked veggies, cheese, fruit, scrambled eggs, etc.

It will help her interest a LOT if you feed her directly from your plate at mealtimes. She may continue to gag at first, but as long as you keep an eye on her, she'll be fine (gagging uses a different muscle set than choking, so it's rare that babies will actually choke with gagging).

Be sure to keep offering her a variety of different tastes and textures--she may turn her nose up at them at first, but babies take their food cues from their parents. She only knows what to eat, and what she likes, by what she is given.