What you feed your baby when she starts eating solid foods matters, and new research out of the UK sheds more light on just how much it does. Following children over 8 years enrolled in The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, researchers at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health at the University of Bristol identified a number of different dietary patterns at 6 and 15 months of age and examined their link with weight and IQ 8 years later.

I am a list maker: To Do lists, Remember lists, Birthday Gift lists, Project Ideas lists, Must Read lists. They all find their way to my trusty pad of yellow-lined paper. I recently simplified my shopping list in the hopes that it would save me time and money. Let me show you how.

One thing I have learned over the last seven years as a parent, informed by the previous decade as nutrition researcher and professor, is that knowing WHAT I needed to feed my kids to support and promote their health is not enough.