Blog
Quick & Easy DIY Baby Food
Food For Thought
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Janelle Sorensen, Healthy Child:
Like most parents, when it came time to start my daughters on solids, I headed to the baby food aisle of the store and loaded up on little jars of pureed produce and boxes of rice cereal. Years later, I read ‘Feeding Baby Green’ by Healthy Child board member and pediatrician, Dr. Alan Greene, and learned that I had been duped.
There’s no such thing as baby food!
“Baby food”, Dr. Greene tells us, is a myth. Commercial baby food was an invention of 20th century food corporations, enforcing the theory that babies need meals separate from the fruits, vegetables and seasonings the rest of the family consume. Pointed and pervasive advertising convinced mothers that good baby food was scientific, uniform, twice boiled, and sold in jars.
Even worse, the rice cereal parents lovingly spoon into their little babes’ mouths is nutritionally similar to super-fine white flour. Dr. Greene says it’s no wonder that kids are hooked on junk food when their first food is akin to Wonder Bread!
Join Dr. Greene’s White Out Now campaign and make your child’s first grain a whole grain. Check out Gwyneth Paltrow’s Brown Rice Baby Food recipe from our Eat Healthy recipe archives to get started.
Or, it can even be easier. In ‘Feeding Baby Green,’ Dr. Greene says you can share an avocado or baked sweet potato as a first food. Just mash well with a fork and mix with a little breastmilk or formula and voila!
Ready for more? Check out these easy and delicious baby food recipes:
- Shane Valentine’s Tarragon Carrots
- Catherine McCord’s Broccoli, Cheese, and Potato Puree
- Cheryl Tallman’s Perfect Chicken Puree
- Happy Baby’s Great Greens Baby Food (Watch the video below to see just how easy it is!)
The beauty of re-thinking and reclaiming baby food, is that you’re providing a much healthier beginning for your baby AND saving money AND reducing your impact on the environment AND laying a foundation for happier meal times because you can start your baby off eating foods you include in everyone’s meal. No more playing short-order cook! The benefits are truly endless – so try it out!
- Find a slew of recipes and tips for making food fast, fun, frugal and eco-friendly at Eat Healthy!
- Join over 2,500 moms at our Easy Organic Living group on Baby Center! There are some great discussions about making baby food.
- Submit your own recipe to help empower other parents!
Posted by roben on 05/23/2011 at 01:12 PM
My neices’ child ate commercial baby food under great protest until we persuaded her mom to atleast try some of the DIY recipies. They were an instant hit whith the child. Additionally, they proved to be far less labor intensive than my neice expected.
Great website….thanks.
Posted by Karen on 05/20/2011 at 03:50 PM
I disagree, although, there are some new decent options out there like Plum Organics (but it’s pretty expensive). I just made a sweet potato for my 6 month old. He ate some of it and I froze 7 other servings in an ice cube tray. That was less than $1 for an organic sweet potato and 7 servings! The clean up really didn’t take long. I have yet to find a veggie that tastes better from a baby food jar than fresh. For example, have you tried baby food peas? They are gross. I wouldn’t eat them so why would my baby. But fresh peas mashed up are delicious. It’s super easy to make some fresh broccoli or peas and freeze them into food cubes. Super Baby Food is another great book about making food for your baby.
Posted by Roxanne on 05/20/2011 at 01:39 PM
Dear Chibi…let’s see the ingredient list for Gerber 1st Foods Banana:
FULLY RIPENED BANANAS, CITRIC ACID, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C)
Hmmm…I don’t add citric acid or ascorbic acid to my home made food, do you? So how is this the same? This is the most basic of foods, yet it still has chemical additives. I’m not some food nut that avoids all additives, but you bet I’m not giving it to my child as their first food!
Additionally, the article says “enforcing the theory that babies need meals separate from the fruits, vegetables and seasonings the rest of the family consume.” Key words are SEPARATE and SEASONINGS. You can easily make your family dinner with a side of asparagus and just mash a little for your baby and give it to them. It’s really easy if you apt to use a fork! Food companies got people to believe that this wasn’t good enough, and that you shouldn’t let babies have seasoned food (total BS…babies can have seasoned food and do in most parts of the world).
You can easily make baby food ahead of time and freeze it, so that argument of yours is no good. It’s cheaper to buy fresh produce and make your own baby food than to buy the jars, so again your argument sinks. And time wise it is very easy (see earlier comment…use a fork and just mash it at the table! It’s not hard!).
The one point this article leaves out is Baby-Led Weaning (or Baby-Led Solids) which promotes not doing any purees. Babies don’t need pureed food. They can go right to solids and before the modern era they did. Food was introduced to young babies as a way to boost their diet since formula wasn’t getting the job done. The practice stuck and was encouraged for breast feeding moms as well. The truth is, babies don’t need food. When they are ready they will pick up the food themselves and feed themselves.
Posted by Chibi Oka-san on 05/16/2011 at 01:06 PM
I have to disagree with these findings. On commersial babyfood it has listed the ingredients and says strictly. “fruit or veggie used” (as in peas, carrots, sweet potatoes) and then water and that’s it. The process they use to preserve the food is the same used in old century canning. Totally safe!
While yes one can take the meal you are having and mash it or buy tones of produce and puree it, not all people have the time to use a blender and puree the food then clean up all the mess. Plus not all have the resources to KEEP food. As in it spoils fast unless you buy frozen, which you people say it’s bad so yeah sorry I totally disagree. I think most jarred BABY FOOD is just as good as home made.
More comments:
Get Answers
View All
Read and Learn
It's the trusted guidebook for the Next Generation of Parenting "...that every single parent needs to read..."
PICK UP A COPY
Now In Paperback!
Archives by Month
What We Read
Posted by TexasDawn on 07/14/2011 at 06:00 AM
I made my 6 year old’s baby food from scratch and currently make it for my 6 month old. There is more work involved, so I was hoping that this time around I could take the easy route and buy baby boy’s food. After researching, I believe DIY food is the most nutritious way to feed my baby. Even baby food that lists only the food (e.g. peas) and water is tricky. Each manufacturer adds a different amount of water; some companies have such a high water content that the nutrition is greatly reduced (to the point where the FDA stepped in). The only way to get a slight idea about which has the highest water content is to compare the calories per serving across different brands. Then you’ll know which of these is the *most* nutritious, but you still won’t know how much water they used. When you make your own you know where all the calories are coming from, that it isn’t diluted to increase profits, and you can introduce such a wider variety of food. Babies love root veggies, a variety of squash, natural grains, etc that simply are not an option when buying commercial baby food.