The First 1 000 Days Are Just the Beginning

We believe that food in the earliest years is about much more than simply feeding a child.

The first 1000 days – from conception to around a child’s second birthday – are one of the most important periods for human growth and development. It is during this time that foundations are laid that can influence a child’s health and development for years to come.

During the first years of life, the brain develops at an extraordinary pace, forming more than one million new neural connections every second. Nutrition is one of the key factors supporting healthy growth and development during this period.

But for us, the first 1000 days are only the beginning.

From their very first bites, children begin discovering flavours, aromas, colours and textures. Little by little, they start developing their relationship with food and their own preferences. These will, of course, change many times as they grow, but childhood is when we have the opportunity to lay the foundations for a varied and balanced diet.

That is why at FURISTO we don’t prepare food only for the very youngest. Every day, we cook for babies and toddlers, nurseries, kindergartens and schools. As children grow, their needs change – and so do our recipes, portion sizes, combinations and the ingredients we include in our menus.

But there is one thing we never change.

Food should be real.

For us, that means preparing it from real, carefully selected, high-quality ingredients whose origins we know. And whenever we talk about quality, we want to be able to stand behind that word with specific ingredients, producers and sources.

[Discover the ingredients we use and where they come from →]

But good ingredients are only the beginning.

We believe children’s food should also be colourful, varied and interesting. It should spark curiosity and appetite. It should allow children to discover and recognise different ingredients, colours, flavours and textures, rather than everything on the plate looking and tasting the same.

This is a principle we follow from a baby’s very first foods all the way through to our menus for schoolchildren.

As children grow, their food grows with them – recipes, portion sizes and nutritional needs change, but our approach to what good food for children should be never does.

The balance of every menu is overseen by Margarita Radulova, a Stanford-certified nutritionist, who develops our menus according to the nutritional needs of children at different stages of their development.

Because our role is not simply to prepare today’s meal.

From their very first bites, we want to give children the opportunity to discover real food, learn to enjoy variety and gradually build a positive relationship with food that can stay with them as they grow.