To think spending this amount isn’t ‘what everyone has to do’?

[Tfios]

My sister reckons she spends £200-300 a month on food and snacks alone for her baby who is of weaning age. I was really surprised and it wasn’t a cost I’d factored in. She says it’s something everyone just has to suck up and do, for convenience and the portion sizes already being prepared. DN doesn’t have a special diet and seems a good eater.

When we get to that point I would have thought we would just adapt what we have minus salt or too much spice; vegetable curries, pasta dishes, jacket potatoes, shepherds pie, porridge and fruit, so on. We have a blender to make our own but I’m sure we will buy a few pureed pouches with each weekly shop for emergencies and those days when we’re very busy or away. Aside from that if our shopping bill increases very slightly I expected it would only be to include more fruit and veg.

Aibu to think I can avoid the snacks on the baby aisle and instead give pitta and hummus, breadsticks, cheese, rice cakes, Greek yoghurt, fruit etc?

Yanbu
What a waste of money! Just have a pack of rich tea biscuits for treats, normal fruit and veg sticks, cubes of cheese etc.

You're not wrong, you don't have to do that. Your sister isn't wrong to do what she is doing, feeding ready made pre portioned, but is mistaken to say she has to. Maybe she doesn't know the alternative and thinks she has to buy the baby food.

Around £50 a week on food and snacks for a baby?

Absolutely bonkers. No, of course you don't 'have' to spend that much, or anywhere near it.

Sounds like she’s filling the kid full of junk food.

We fed our weaning babies normal food, whatever we were eating for dinner etc. Have never bought baby snacks, pouches or meals.

Of course you don't have to.

We did just buy the baby food and snacks amongst giving him finger foods like toast etc to try at first and then moved onto regular food after a few months but still buy some of the toddler snacks and occasional toddler ready meals for emergencies.

I've raised 3 children and just given them normal food. I've never bought a baby food jar/pouch/snack ever. Don't fall for the consumerism trap.

Mine just ate what we ate. Sounds like a diet full of upf and junk.

You’re totally right. 9 month old baby DD easy almost what we eat, and the 4YO almost exactly what we do. It costs literally nothing to give off a small amount of our otherwise-large portions for them.

I do spend a bit more on fruit and things like rice cakes, but at a guess no more than a tenner a week, almost certainly less.

My babies had no official baby snacks at all. It wasn't the labours of Hercules.

YANBU. Not only don’t you have too, I think you’d have to actually try to spend that much even if you did go down the pre-bought route. Pouches / pre-prepared food per portion are between £1-£2 each and snacks are maybe 50p - £1.

We did a mix for ours and it only put our weekly shop up by about £10-£15 (excluding nappies etc).

My near teens eat a lot. I doubt I spend that on their food.

But... when DD1 was young, I struggled a lot with confidence for making baby friendly food. By the time DD2 was weaning, I had found my confidence a lot more and didn't need to rely on prepared stuff as much.

We never bothered. Always seemed like more pissing about, another thing to remember to have in.

She's an idiot.

There's no such thing as baby snacks, baby crisps, baby biscuits, baby food....

It's all junk food marketed to make you feel like the "organic puffed corn with tomato powder" on it is somehow better than giving hem a crisp.

Babies? They just eat food. You don't even need to puree it!
Absolutely no need to give a weaning baby crisps or biscuits or anything like that.

Nobody ever has to do what everyone else.

Fruit and veg aren’t filling so they aren’t really what you want to be increasing your shopping bill with. It should just be all your normal meals with a slight increase to take into account the other stomach. No need for a blender as you don’t need to purée anything.

When I weaned my 3rd I used to put all the leftovers from Sunday lunch into the food processor and freeze it in little jars. She ate the same meal every day for months - I figured it was a balanced meal of meat and veg and she loved it 😂

I just fed my son what we ate, maybe very slightly adapted depending on what it was e.g. if we were having a spicy curry.

I did mash/semi puree at first but that was a personal thing. I had a terrible fear of him choking and couldn't cope with baby led weaning at that stage so this worked for me. As he got a bit bigger, we did bigger pieces and finger foods such as toast.

He's now 10 and eats anything and everything- we all just eat the same at home (he is even partial to the aforementioned curry!). I never have to worry about eating out with him as there will always be something he likes. In Austria last summer, he had a whale of a time trying all the different foods.

Bonkers! Aldi do very cheap pouches, but you don’t want to be relying on them all the time anyway as it is a limited range and they are very puréed purees. No texture or much flavour in them but handy as a back up or when travelling/caught out. As PPs have said, just feed them normal food minus salt, sugar and honey, you can blend it or mash it. They eat tiny amounts to begin with anyway. The NHS has some useful info online about nutrition etc. Make sure they’re getting enough iron from things like meat, green veg and lentils.

My first ate what we did and I bought the odd baby rice cakes. My second refused solids full stop and it was a cause of rejoicing when he started to take puree from a pouch, so for a good few months we had a houseful of the things. Never spent anything like that much on them!

I mean it felt like I was spending £50 a week on blueberries and rice cakes but I clearly wasn't. Mostly just adapted what we ate.

I'm spending quite a bit more on fruit now that we have dd - huge sweet tooth on this one, and it's helping with her constipation 🤣 And our yogurt spending has increased exponentially as neither me nor dp eat yogurt, but both kids do. I do buy some baby snack foods for convenience, but main meals are normal food/same as us. Oh and baby porridge - dd2 has never moved on to even readybrek, I think because nursery still uses baby porridge.

But these are all optional. I can't think of anything mandatory, especially with a non allergy diet.

Don't be judgey, her baby her life.
You do you.

You are completely correct. Both children were fed exactly what we ate, portions removed before salt added when under 1, we all ate food with less salt when over 1.

Snacks also matched ours (we don’t tend to snack on crisps/biscuits so our food was appropriate). The only spend that went up was for fruit - they loved berries and I previously only bought frozen blueberries and raspberries but switched to fresh just for them together with having a wide variety in general

Thats excessive but I have to admit I wasn't prepared for the demands for fruit and the obsession with berries which aren't cheap 😅

We never bought any of that, apart from the very odd box of those baby organics flapjack-type bars for the occasional portable snack. We did baby-led weaning, so DD always had a meal we were eating too, or finger food at lunch etc. We did end up buying more fruit and veg - especially things like broccoli - and reasonably expensive fish and meat because that’s what DD liked, for example broccoli, salmon and crushed potato; or chilli con carne and rice, and so on. She turned out to have expensive tastes, but when she found something she liked she had a great appetite!

The other thing you need to know is that it isn’t mandatory to be always carrying loads of baby snacks around. I was amazed at how nobody seemed to go anywhere without practically a full picnic hamper of snacks (either bought or home made). You’d think a kid couldn’t get through an hour of soft play without eating! We brought a minimal amount for DD and tried to avoid encouraging too much snacking, and even now at 11 she doesn’t really eat between meals (she does eat lots at mealtimes and is not at all picky). Minimising snacking is much better for weight and reducing tooth decay, as the more times you snack in a day, the less your mouth can get back to the right saliva Ph to combat sugar and bacteria on the teeth. Eating all the time means more of a tendency to develop tooth decay.

So don’t feel that you have to go everywhere with packets of raisins, pouches, yoghurts, breadsticks or baby tomato puffs or whatever for every five minutes - your kid will survive fine without them!