An Introduction to Homemade Baby Food

As of last week, our little one is eating a couple of servings of vegetables a day. We started with carrots, and yesterday he tried out sweet potatoes, which he loves. In another day or two he's going to try winter squash on for size, and then next up is peas. I hope he likes peas, cause I've got all these peas in the freezer that I need to get rid of, and outside of fried rice or curry, I don't want peas on my plate. And you can only eat so much fried rice and curry.

Anyway, there are a million convenient ways to get pureed vegetables into your kid, but I really want to encourage making your own baby food. I did a little cost comparison, and it's pretty amazing how much money there is to be saved. Let's break it down:

The discount baby site Babies Travel Lite has Gerber's 1st Foods for $1.25 for a two-pack, with each little plastic tub holding a 2.5 oz serving of veggies. One the plus side, these are straight-up vegetables (or fruits). There are no preservatives, salt, or fillers or anything. On the downside, they come in plastic tubs, and I don't have any use for adding even more plastic garbage to landfills.

On the other hand, I picked up two bags of baby carrots at Kroger yesterday for a buck each. Getting them ready for airplaning into the hangar was easy enough: I steamed them for 15 minutes or so using a big pot and a steamer basket (one of those metal collapsible things that you've probably got crammed in a cabinet somewhere), then I used a food mill to mash 'em all up. You can use a food processor or a blender if you want (it would certainly be quicker and would require less muscle work), but the food mill provides a little more textural variety. Now, I know what you're thinking; if you have to buy all this extra stuff to make the baby food, then is it really going to be cheaper in the long run? Well, yeah, it is. Plus, the food mill (Target has this model for 15 clams, which is just like the one I use, only mine didn't come w/ a carrying case, so it was probably only 10 bucks or something) is perfect for eating out. Order a side of steamed vegetables and mash 'em right there at the table.

Once the carrots were sufficiently pulverized, I used a Ziplock bag with a corner cut off like a pastry piping bag to deliver the goods to ice cube trays. Slap 'em in the freezer, then pop 'em out and into a freezer bag for longer term storage. Depending on the ice cube tray, each cube will usually be .5 oz or 1 oz (mine has .5 oz slots), so it's easy enough to measure out a serving. Once they were cooked and mashed, I ended up with about five 2.5 oz servings out of my carrots.

So let's compare across the board:

Cost*- $.40 per home-made serving vs. $.62 per store-bought serving (that's a difference of $.66 a day, or roughly 20 bucks a month).

Environmental- Home-made produced 2 Ziplock bags plus the two plastic bags the carrots came in vs. a little plastic tub for each and every serving of store-bought (and that's just the Gerber brand; I'm not sure what other brands come in.)

Effort- Home-made requires steaming, mashing, and prepping for storage vs. opening the store-bought container, but I personally enjoy making the food.

Health- You control exactly what's going into the home-made food, so you know there are no sub-standard vegetables, no preservatives, no fillers or thickeners, and nothing else that's unnecessary (it's also easy to use only organic vegetables if that's your bag, though that would certainly alter the cost analysis up there) vs. a variety of additives depending on brand and type of food.

Also, I should point out, once enough foods have been introduced to the baby's palate, then it becomes even easier. Making mashed potatoes for dinner? Take a few spoonfuls out before you add the butter and milk, and baby gets to eat mashed potatoes right along with you. Having asparagus alongside that pork loin tonight? I'm sure the rugrat would enjoy a few spears once they've been through the food mill.

Regardless of which you choose, easy, convenient store-bought tubs or home-made veggie mush, let me offer you one slight warning about introducing vegetables to your kid's diet: get ready for some poop. And if you thought his usual green poop was weird, wait until you get the pleasure of checking out orange poop. Thanks carrots!

*This breakdown is just for the carrots, but I also grabbed two sweet potatoes that produced about the same number of servings for $2.70, or $.54 per serving, and I got a 16 oz bag of frozen peas for $.89, which could turn out to be about $.13 per serving (!!).