Interesting article on baby food - Why it's best to make your own

MomToMany wrote: Cheating Babies: Nutritional Quality and Cost of Commercial Baby Food

Here's a part of the article:

I. Major Findings
Gerber and Heinz replace real food with water and thickening agents in many of their products for children over six months of age. Such adulterated products are nutritionally inferior to products made with more fruits and vegetables.

The single-ingredients foods made by all the companies differ only modestly as a result of adding somewhat different amounts of water. However, Gerber and Heinz add substantial amounts of water and thickening agents (flours and chemically modified starches) to more than half of their twenty-five most popular fruits, mixed and creamed vegetables, desserts, and dinners for babies over six months (second- and third-stage foods). Not only are those products a monetary rip-off, they are also nutritionally inferior to similar products made without fillers. Gerber and Heinz' bananas with tapioca, for example, contain less than half of the levels of nutrients found in their plain first-stage bananas. Gerber and Heinz' regular dinners, which contain at least two types of refined flour as thickeners, provide less than 50% of the nutrient levels found in comparable dinners made by Growing Healthy, which are made from whole foods and contain no starchy fillers. Many fewer products made by Beech-Nut and Earth's Best contain starchy fillers.

Baby foods are very high priced compared to similar regular foods. Baby foods cost far more per ounce than conventional national brands or supermarket brands. For example, parents often pay more than double for baby food fruit juices and applesauce. Gerber Graduates diced fruits and vegetables are also more than twice the price of comparable products available in the canned goods aisle. For the majority of puréed baby foods, there are no comparable regular products. However, judging from the instances in which direct comparisons can be made, these baby foods are also priced far higher than they would be in a competitive industry.

Makers of baby food encourage a mystique about their products. They want parents to think that commercial baby foods have special properties that make them particularly appropriate, if not essential, for infants.

Advertising campaigns promote the myth that commercial products are especially good at meeting the nutritional and developmental needs of infants. Gerber's public relations and advertising machinery has cultivated an almost sacred image in people's minds of Gerber products. Those perceptions are clearly untrue. Parents, armed with a food processor, blender, or mashing fork, can easily prepare safe, nutritious, and economical food for their infants at home. Of course, many commercial products are nutritious and do fill a need when convenience is desired.


Makes you want to make your own baby food, which is so easy and so much healthier.

gr33n3y3z replied: I coudnt agree more with you
I made all my baby food also

kit_kats_mom replied: I made a bunch of the staples & froze it. Stuff like squash, avacados, apples & sweet potatoes. But I still used organic food & gerbers when I wanted to add variety. All their meat stuff is nasty though

3_call_me_mama replied: We did homemade food too. We did buy a few jars of the stage one stuff to keep on hand incase we ran out of prepped food (which almost never happened) and used them as a treat in a sense (When she was old enough to see cameron eating pudding or yogurt or whatever we would open the little jar and put it in a dish for her and let her think it was somethign great!) So she might have had 6-8 jars in her life... But we made the staples and froze them. or made fresh daily!

akelly replied: This thread was made for me! :-) I've thought making your own being best just made SENSE, because its just the food you process, nothing more. And since its obviously cheaper, I thought hubby would go for it. But he needs convincing.

So are there any good sites on making your own? And is it as simple as food-processing until the food item is smooth? Do you then just jar it? I'd love to read up on it, it seems really simple...which is a surefire way to not realizing I'm not doing it right! ;-)

Amy

~Roo'sMama~ replied: Do they list the thickening agents in the ingredients, or is it a hidden ingredient? I'm just wondering because I have a stage two jar of pears and the ingredients listed are pear paste, water, ascorbic acid and citric acid. So obviously they've added water to it but I wonder what they mean by pear paste?

I have been wanting to start making my own baby food - or at least some of it. There are a lot of things that I just never buy because we never eat it - like squash or sweet potatoes. So in order for Andrew to get a good variety I'd have to buy some jars.

coasterqueen replied: I'm lucky my girls never really liked the jarred stuff. Kylie pretty much refused it and wanted "real" food, lol. We did use it with Megan for a few weeks to work with her gag reflex but she always puked it up, so we just gave her finger foods.

I do give Gerber wagon wheels, (did give biter bisquits) and those dissolvable puffs because Megan doesn't puke them up.

Otherwise it's finger foods for Megan. She LOVES apple slices and carrot sticks to gnaw on.

MomToMany replied: Here's an excellent website about baby food:

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/


Sara, I'm pretty sure it's hidden in the pear paste. That way they don't have to put it on the label.

akelly, yes, you just need a food processor, or blender, or just a fork. You can make a big batch, and then freeze small portions into an ice cube tray. There are baby food "kits", like the ones found HERE, but ice cube trays work just as well, and is a lot cheaper. Once they are frozen, take them out of the tray, and put them in freezer bags. Then just take a serving out as needed, thaw, and feed baby! Easy!

kimberley replied: i have bought the organic baby food for variety but mostly made my own.. especially the meats. pear paste is likely mushed pears, water and corn starch.
for foods you don't eat a lot like squash, cook up a big batch and then freeze it in ice cube trays. they are perfect sized portions i just got one of those mini blenders and lightly boil or steam the harder veggies and fruit, blend it up and freeze.

eta: oops guess we were typing at the same time Mollie. sorry for being repetitive.

My3LilMonkeys replied: Very interesting! We never ate too much past the stage one foods anyways - once they had teeth the girls pretty much eat mashed up table food. Madison still gets baby food sometimes (mostly at IL's house) but this really makes you think!

mummy2girls replied: I made jennas baby food. i would make dibnnera nd then mush ity up for her in teh blender and store some in some baby food jars( i bought the fruit baby food though) ...

3_call_me_mama replied: Super baby foos is a great book and also Feed me I'm yours. is great too

mom2tripp replied: I made all of Tripp's, unless we were in a rush and I just had to grab something and didn't have any made. It's very easy

msoulz replied: I recall reading about 7 years ago (last baby!) that there was one vegetable that should NOT be used to make baby food, but rather the commercial foods should be used due to some chemcial or something. I am thinking it was carrots. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

CosmetologyMommy replied: I was buying baby food but I think I will rethink that!

Edward's Mommy replied: I've wanted to make my son's baby food since I was pregnant with him, the only problem is my husband lost his job when my son was two weeks old (I quit before my son was born) and he just started training at his new job on Monday. So money has been pretty much non-existant, any money I get goes to baby food, diapers, baby clothes, whatever my child needs.

LilaGrace'sMom replied:
Thanks for the link. La Leche League has a great book on solids, also.

Maddy'sMom replied: The carrot thing is about nitrates...making baby food from fresh carrots can have added nitrates...they say to start out with baby food carrots from the jar. The AAP recommends not preparing your own carrots until about 8 months of age, when a baby's digestive tract is prepared to fight off the bacteria and nitrates in certain root vegetables.

IF you purchase organic carrots or other root veggies, the risk of excess nitrates is low, since they aren't grown using nitrate fertilizers.

msoulz replied:
Thanks! The memory has not completely been lost!

mysweetpeasWil&Wes replied:
Yeah, I read this too. Same goes for beets. Most root vegetables are high in nitrates. I typically made Wil's food, but for things like carrots and other foods I didn't make often, I bought Earth's Best organic food. I admit to giving him Gerber when a friend gave me a bunch that her daughter didn't eat anymore. And to this day, he loves the Gerber Graduate turkey franks! You do what you gotta do sometimes. I'm an organic mama, but wasn't raised on organic food and I'm doing okay.