Make or buy baby food?

[Anonymous]

If cost and time are not issues, is it better to make or buy baby food? I’m not talking gerbers or the usual store brands but the new organic, specialized companies that do testing for heavy metals and get clean eating awards. Would they source produce from small farms that is cleaner than the typical organic fruits and greens that I can get at Whole Foods? Or is freshly made the best?

[Anonymous]

You’ll do both! Some bought for ease and others made whenever you can there’s no OR

[Anonymous]

Honestly, we just mashed up regular food. I don't understand all the discussion about "making" baby food. All food is baby food. Just add water or milk and mash it to hell with a fork. Don't add any seasonings or salt.

So buying a jar of banana? No. I just mashed it up. It's good for them to learn how to swallow the thicker stuff anyhow. So if it's not perfectly smooth, I think that's a good thing.

We certainly bought some jars to round out this time too. Especially the meat, because they need a protein source and I didn't want to blend meat. Ground meat can work, but can also be tricky. It smells disgusting, but that's ok. It's only until they learn to swallow and chew.

[Anonymous]

So if you read the Kids Eat in Color blog on this, making your own food isn't really going to avoid the issue with heavy metals if you're using things like root vegetables and rice. So selecting how much and what to eat is important. https://kidseatincolor.com/toxic-baby-food/

Because of nitrate issues, you don't want to make your own baby food beets and spinach (look at a list online). Baby food manufacturers have a way of sourcing around this. https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/family-resources-education/700childrens/2014/06/homemade-baby-food-the-danger-of-nitrates

So just be a careful consumer, avoid relying too much on root vegetables and rice, and you'll be okay whatever direction you go in.

[Anonymous]

A mix of both. Store bought so great for trips because the storage requirement of the homemade can be tricky.

But this phase is so short. Maybe six months often less. So don’t worry about it.

[Anonymous]

We only used home-made baby food for routine meals at home; never served DC food from any jar or can. A mini blender proved useful for this.

We did supplement with some snacks (always Beechnut, never Gerber; check the ingredients lists) for times when in a car or otherwise not at home.

Btw, we also would put some potential allergens (tree nuts, peanuts) mixed in the at-home meals, initially tiny amounts of single potential allergen, then larger amounts, to PREVENT DC from developing food allergies. No family history of allergies, btw. We did this on advice of an MD. Check with a pediatrician or a pediatric allergist about how to do this.

[Anonymous]

We did both, but always bought manufactured products for vegetables with potential nitrate issues.

[Anonymous]

OP, I highly recommend that you follow the instragram account Solid Starts. You don't need to make special "baby food," you just need to learn how to adapt regular food in an age-appropriate way. Even if you don't go with a baby-led-weaning approach, it's still really important not to over-rely on perfectly smooth store-bought purees; you want your baby to get used to a variety of textures and flavors.

[Anonymous]

Neither. Just overcook the vegetables you're already eating and feed them to baby. They only eat "baby food" for like 2 months and then move onto whole, mushy food.

[Anonymous]

We bought a lot of purees. Sometimes organic, sometimes regular Gerber. We did by multigrain cereal instead of rice cereal to avoid too much arsenic and mixed up the veggies so it wasn't all carrots and sweet potato. I think you should do whatever is easier for you. The purees are fine, they don't tend to add extra sugar or salt (unlike the "snacks" which you should look at carefully) but the problem is many of the purees are root veggies that may have a lot of heavy metals no matter what they do so you just have to mix it up.

[Anonymous]

First time moms are ridiculous!! Just buy the pouches from the store, honey, it's fine.

[Anonymous]

Avoid it all together and do baby led weaning. I thought it was so much easier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First time moms are ridiculous!! Just buy the pouches from the store, honey, it's fine.

Pouches are terrible for the environment, do nothing to help kids build oral motor skills, and expose your kid to only one food texture. Relying too heavily on them will make your kid a picky eater.
- mom of a PKer and a 1 year old

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, we just mashed up regular food. I don't understand all the discussion about "making" baby food. All food is baby food. Just add water or milk and mash it to hell with a fork. Don't add any seasonings or salt.

So buying a jar of banana? No. I just mashed it up. It's good for them to learn how to swallow the thicker stuff anyhow. So if it's not perfectly smooth, I think that's a good thing.

We certainly bought some jars to round out this time too. Especially the meat, because they need a protein source and I didn't want to blend meat. Ground meat can work, but can also be tricky. It smells disgusting, but that's ok. It's only until they learn to swallow and chew.

+1

I "made" the baby food that was pretty easy -- mashing up sweet potatoes, or bananas, or avocados, etc. And I bought jars of some stuff that would be more time-consuming to make. It's such a short phase that you need "special" food for the baby, it didn't seem worth stressing over.

[Anonymous]

Just mash up what you are eating already and as someone else said, overcook the veggies. Don't make things harder on yourself. You don't need to follow anyone on IG or buy any books; seriously, make it easy on yourself.