Processed vs homemade baby food

[SqidgeBum]

Hi. My LO is 5 months and I am starting to really look into the whole weaning thing. I have decided to not exclusively do BLW but I do plan on mixing purees and finger foods. We live in a very healthy household food wise and we are very determined to try our best to keep our DS on healthy, homemade food. However, tonight I have decided to do some research on salt and sugar intake for babies. I am under no illusion that all homemade can be expensive so I thought I would investigate processed food vs homemade further, and its boggled me a little so I thought people here might know more.

For purees, I have made my own vegetable ones and frozen them, but cannot work out the sugar situation for homemade fruit purees. Are processed ones filled with sugar in comparison to homemade ones? For example, Sainsbury's pear, apple and strawberry puree has 10.5g of sugar per pot. That sounds bad to me, but is it? Is homemade puree much better for my LO? Or are all fruit purees bad for babies?

Salt seems easier to avoid in most processed purees. Most I have examined say they have about 0.1g or much less in some. I know daily allowance is about 0.12g.

Is processed baby food really as bad as I have been led to believe?

A tangent - see if your HV team run a day course on paediatric first aid, or maybe find one independently. You'll feel much more equipped.

@Veterinari you didnt answer my question. You made a comment about 'bland food' in the western world and obesity because I questioned another poster about whether curry is suitable for a baby, and you didnt actually contribute or help at all. Tackling you for your negative and unhelpful contribution isnt rude.

Have a look at information and videos on the difference between gagging and choking. Babies will gag a lot at the beginning, and I found it helped me feel less worried when I felt I could tell the two apart.

I used all jars - saved so much time and the introduction to a variety of savory and sweet foods is great. They ate meals I would have never thought of making and they are healthy with regards to natural sugars and no added salt. It was a great start to food and there were no problems moving onto regular meals.

@SherlockSays thats positive!! Sounds ideal

@Squidgebum. I said You can give babies pretty much any foods that adults eat so yes I clearly answered your question.

And yes I also commented on the fact that our focus on bland , processed children’s food is contributing to the obesity epidemic we see in the west. That is a factual statement - i’m Not sure why you think it is that is ‘negative’ or ‘rude’ or why you’ve taken such personal offence to it.

You are of course free to ‘tackle’ me for answering your question and making a general observation about obesity in children. Well done you!

I’ll leave you to police your thread. Enjoy!

One more note regarding curry. The curry as such is not a problem but before you give it to a baby you need to ensure that it is fine with the ingredients. You introduce the ingredients one by one to see if the baby reacts to it. If you would give curry to 5/6 months old and the baby has for example an allergic reaction you might not know if it was vegetables or spices. This is why the HV suggest giving one fruit or veg before moving on to the next. I hope it helps.

My first two wouldn’t eat pre made food ( I think they were too bland) and they happily ate our food but dc no. 3 lived off them!

Dc3 (aged 2.5) can actually eat quite spicy food now 🙈 her fave meal is chicken itame from Wagamama’s 🙈

I have an 18m old. From 6m - 12m they are mainly exploring textures, flavours, getting it into their mouth etc and won't be 'eating' an awful lot, relying on milk still, I found all the information quite daunting so totally get this. In the end we did abit of everything that suited the situation, babies mood, how busy we were etc. As others have said, as long as it says 'no added' them it's fine, may be slightly less nutrition in jarred due to packing process but we just used them when put and about. Both BLW and purees can result in borking, it is scary the first few times but then you get used to it and it doesn't really happen much - if you haven't already do you peadiatric BLS/chucking course I found it reassuring to go over if nothing else.

We now mainly eat the same things and freeze any spare. But just experiment over the next 6months, let your little one squish and prod and suck and splat so they enjoy food and don't feel pressured to do it a certain way, just follow their lead.

*choking . Peadiatric chucking course is a whole different thing

Paediatric chucking = young babies exploring trajectory.

OP, have a think about what you were eating when pregnant then feeding (if applicable). Just keep things simple at first (one or two flavours..soft...then lumpy...substituting the ones that aren't too popular). If you had spice, introduce it gradually.

I found DD liked quite sour/savoury veg in preference to sweet. She certainly picked up my goats cheese/milk preference!

If you have a ridiculously sweet tooth, rethink my advice!

Honestly I really don't know why people faff with baby food of any sort. It's too much bother, expense or washing up.
Long long before BLW was a thing, out of sheer laziness that's effectively all I did whilst all the other mums at baby group were buying Annabel Karmel etc toddler cookery books and spending hours concocting, mushing pureeing and freezing in ice cube portions - only for little Archie to spit it out because he didn't like it.
To put it simply I cooked our food (mostly from scratch admittedly, although burgers & sausages are from a proper butcher so all meat), without salt and sugar, if wanted we added to our own. I'd take some and mash well with a fork and let daughter help herself (with fingers, forks or spoons whatever she fancied) often or usually from one side of my plate.
Far, far less effort, and no extra shopping or washing up. What's not to like about that? Perfect lazy parenting. Not a fad, just lazy, but it worked. Daughter now is one of the least fussy teenagers I know. She'll try everything too.

Boots do special stock cubes for babies. I loved these and made all my own foods with them.

You introduce the ingredients one by one to see if the baby reacts to it.

Maybe at just on 6 months, but after that it's usually a bit of a free for all. Otherwise you'd be doing a new food a day for the next 6 months.

Don’t stock up on purée until you know your baby will eat them. Neither of mine wanted anything to do with them, but both were happy with BLW. I had a freezer full of lovingly made purées. Which I uktimately made into soup.

Totally agree with Ariela, the ‘marketing’ for baby food is so clever that parents (mums) get obsessed with giving their baby the right sort of food and spending a fortune on it. Just mush up whatever you are eating ... there is absolutely no need for processed baby food, special diets etc etc

Agree with others- mine just had what we were eating. I don't really add salt to food anyway and you can buy stock cubes with no salt. Sooo much easier than faffing with puree.

And yes I also commented on the fact that our focus on bland , processed children’s food is contributing to the obesity epidemic we see in the west.

If you are talking about babies foods for weaning, there isn't the slightest evidence that this is the case. Obesity has many complex causes.

I live in Japan (which is also part of Asia, by the way....) and babies get incredibly bland food for months on end. I don't particularly want to do that and I enjoy giving my baby more challenging and tasty food, but the bland food that Japanese babies get does NOT appear to result in obesity--Japan has among the lowest obesity rates in the developed world, and child obesity rates are very low too.

It's pretty silly to pretend that the things that parents do for a few short months between 6mo and 12mo are going to have much of an effect on children's BMI in the long term. Obesity is predominantly a societal issue--environment interacting with susceptible genes. I would love to believe that I can control my child's long-term appearance/health by choosing particular weaning foods, but that's very unlikely.

As for "just give the baby what you are having"--well, sometimes this is possible, sometimes it is more trouble than it is worth. Last night's meal was pork marinated with ingredients that included soy sauce, Thai fish sauce, anchovy sauce and various other salty things. If you tried to "just cook it without the salt!!!!" then you would have to leave out half of the ingredients and effectively make a completely different dish. And I don't want to eat salt-free food.

We adapt our own meals where practical (removing a portion for baby before adding any salty ingredients is often possible), but where this is not possible, we get out some baby foods and cereals.

Incidentally, most restaurant meals, takeaway meals and ready meals are too salty for babies, so if families ever eat these, they would be advised to have some baby foods available to fill in any nutritional gaps.

I also give homemade meat puree daily, because there is strong evidence that babies benefit nutritionally from eating meat regularlydaily, ideallybut we don't eat much meat as a family. Fortified cereals are also very beneficial for babies. The WHO specifically states that babies need to be getting either meat OR fortified cereals daily, otherwise they will probably not meet the RDAs for iron and zinc.

Baby foods have a useful role to play--there are no prizes for forgoing them altogether.

If you are talking about babies foods for weaning, there isn't the slightest evidence that this is the case. Obesity has many complex causes.

Well in that context i’m Talking about children. Which, at the risk of stating the obvious, is why I used the word ‘children’. And also the word ‘contributing’ rather than ‘sole cause’.

Not sure who your geography lesson is aimed at. Again I risk stating the obvious but I would assume that most of us know that Japan is in Asia. Doesn’t mean that babies aren’t weaned On curry in other parts of Asia - it’s a diverse continent Thanks anyway.