We have dedicated ourselves extensively to fish in infant feeding, but we could not fail to mention other marine animals that are also part of the diet of people, seafood.
Let's see in detail what seafood is, Seafood classes and their properties, and we leave for the next installment the controversial issue about the age of introduction of shellfish in children's food.
A shellfish or seafood is an edible invertebrate marine animal. This definition normally includes crustaceans (shrimp, shrimp, shrimp, crabs, barnacles ...), mollusks (mussels, clams, cockles, squid, squid ...) and other marine animals such as some echinoderms (sea urchin).
We focus on the first two groups, usually more present in our menus.
Crustaceans
Crustaceans are prized for their flavor since prehistoric times and provide proteins of high biological value. Crustaceans are covered by a hard, hard shell and in some of them it forms a shell that covers it as a shield. They often have thick tongs and use them to defend themselves.
They are delicious foods, although they are generally expensive, but they are increasingly being extended in our diet.
They include several groups of animals such as lobsters, prawns, shrimp, crabs, prawns, barnacles… Crustaceans are fundamentally aquatic and inhabit all depths, both in the marine, brackish and freshwater environment.
The mollusks
The mollusks have a soft body and may or may not have a shell, this being external (such as oysters) or internal and having the mollusk enclosed within itself like the pen that looks like plastic that squid and octopus have.
Within the group of mollusks, cephalopods have a special importance in the Mediterranean diet: octopus, sepia and squid, delicious meat, easy preparation and consumption and also usually please children.
Teutids (Teuthida) are an order of cephalopod mollusks commonly known as squid (due to their calcareous "bone" known as feather or cane = Latin calamus).
The sepíidos (Sepiida), are an order of cephalopod mollusks known as sepias, cuttlefish, potas or chocos
The octapods (Octopoda, from the Greek, octó, eight and podós, "pies") are an order of cephalopod mollusks commonly known as octopuses. They lack a shell and have eight arms
Seafood Properties
Fish and shellfish are good sources of protein and essential vitamins and minerals. Seafood has virtually no fat (1-5%) and is a good source of iodine (sea shellfish), necessary for proper development.
Water is the most abundant substance in shellfish, between 70 to 80% of its composition. Every 100 grams of seafood, we find an average of 18 to 20 grams of quality protein such as meat and eggs. Seafood proteins are more fibrous, which is why they are sometimes more difficult to digest than meat.
Seafood also contains purines, compounds that are produced by the digestion of dietary proteins or synthesized as such by the body and that are converted into uric acid. The average purine content in shellfish is 18 to 20 milligrams per 100 grams of shellfish. Excess uric acid in blood predisposes to gout.
Seafood is rich in phosphorus, potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, iron, iodine (as we have noted) and chlorine. The ones that provide the most iron are oysters, clams, chirlas, mussels and cockles. As for vitamins, shellfish provide vitamins of group B, especially B1, B2, B3 and B12, and to a lesser extent vitamins A and D.
Seafood contains cholesterol but also omega-3 fatty acids and does not harm the profile of fats in the blood unless consumed in excess.
In short, we can conclude that shellfish are healthy foods as long as they are consumed in moderation, but they also do not provide nutrients that are not present in other foods, so their introduction into the children's diet should not be rushed due to their high allergenic potential.
Another question is at what age we can start offering seafood to children, and to this we dedicate the second part of this topic.
Photos | Congratulations and Brent Nelson on Flickr In Babies and more | Complementary feeding: the fish, the fish in the infantile feeding: blue fish, white fish and semigrasos fish
