After flopping on the couch,
exhausted from a day with the kids and an afternoon chock full of babyfood
making, the hubs turned to me and said, ‘why don’t you just buy your babyfood
like everyone else?’ I looked at him
dumbfounded for a moment before I started spouting off all the benefits of
making your own babyfood.
Cost – when you consider that a little 4.5 oz jar of baby food
costs close to a dollar and most fruits and vegetables cost somewhere between one
and two dollars per pound, it becomes obvious that making your own babyfood is
far more economical. For example, I just
bought close to five pounds of Bartlett pears for under five dollars, those
pears will make approximately four whole trays of babyfood and at 12 oz per tray that’s
about 48 oz of babyfood. For the
same price I could buy about four to five jars of baby food (unless they are on
a super sale), which (in this example) makes homemade babyfood about half the cost.
Taste – have you ever tasted jarred babyfood? It tastes funny. It’s so processed that the natural flavours barely shine
through the super strained purees. I want my carrot baby
food to taste like carrots and my pears to taste like pears; otherwise I can’t help but wonder if my babe will
recognize the flavour once he moves on to table foods. As far as I'm concerned, the thicker stage 2 and 3 jarred baby foods are in a class all their own, they taste gross, they smell disgusting and my spoiled, homemade baby
food eating kid wanted nothing to do with them when I took the boy
travelling to China at eight months old.
Nutrition – it’s no surprise that fresh, whole foods are the most
nutritious options for the entire family, so it follows that fresh homemade food is a
good choice for baby. I have been known
to occasionally grab a few beginner purees from the store, for those days that I haven’t quite
got up the gusto to make baby food, but only after carefully reading the labels. Many jarred
baby foods (particularly the stage 2 and 3 variety) have high water, salt or sugar
contents. Remember the order the ingredients are listed are an indication of the composition of the food; water should
never be the first ingredient.
From a nutrition standpoint, not
only does homemade baby food give me complete control over what my baby
consumes, it also allows me to introduce foods, like the superfood quinoa,
that are not readily available in jarred foods.
Texture – last, but certainly not least, making my own babyfood
gives me the power to gradually introduce texture to my boys. There’s no need to go directly from
super-pureed to chunky foods. When the
baby started eating solids, I pureed everything until smooth, now I puree until
there is just a hint of texture. I also make a point of having at least one slightly
chunkier food available throughout the week to slowly ease the transition towards table foods.
In essence, by making my own babyfood, I’m saving money, retaining control of what my baby eats and giving him a chance to taste the flavours of a well-rounded, wholesome and nutritious diet that I hope he will carry forward through his entire life.
Do you make your own babyfood or do you buy it from the store? What prompted that decision?
