Ready meals for children

[Time2]

Hi I am in the process of producing a specialised range of ready meals for children (12 months pus). The meals will be handmade, with no added salt, sugar, colourings, preservatives or GM's. We have the opertunity of producing Organic or non-organic meals. There is of course, a premium for Organic due to the cost of the ingredients. These meals would be for retail and on sale in restaurants. What are your views, do you think you would prefer organic, even though it would be more expensive or would you be just as happy with a non organic meal due to the fact it is handmade with none of the nasties?

organic veg I can take or leave tbh

BUT when it comes to meat it has to be organic or free range from the supermarket OR I go to my local farmer

no cheap and nasty stuff from a hideous 'farm' somewhere

echo olive!

Not that bothered about organic fruit and veg but would prefer to pay more a have free-range meats (if that's a category)...never sure if organic meat is just about what they are fed rather than how the animals are kept.

if I was to buy a kiddy ready-meal .. which I wouldn't ever after the age of 12 months tbh even though I was happy to use jars for weaning ..

I would want the root veg to be organic .. so yes probably all the ingredients should be organice

I will only buy organic ready meals for dd1 (20 months). Bit more flexible with veg but def organic meat.

I think it is a fab idea - will it be nationwide? I'm sure you are aware of the competition e.g. freshdaisy - my local Sainsbury's stock their frozen meals.

I think the idea of restaurants doing them is fab - most childrens foods are crap. I would definitely pay a premium for good quality and organic children's foods.

Best of luck.

I don't mean dd1 only has organic ready meals - like I never cook for her. As a standby I use organic ready meals esp if I've forgotten to get anything out of the freezer.

hah hah at hotmamma .. worried that the mafia were gonna get you

I could just picture other mners thinking "Check out that slattern mother only giving her child ready meals".

I'm with the other ladies who said meat must be organic, but don't mind about the veg .

I would definitely go for organic and would suggest you look at the success of the Organix range while you are deliberating over this. Best of luck with it.

Are you familiar with the EU Kids Food Directives (a piece of legislation Officially called ‘The Processed Cereal Based Foods and Baby Foods for Infants and Young Children (England Regulations 2004)?

It covers three main areas:

Nutritional content
Pesticide Residues
Labelling

Your question about whether to go organic or not would fall under the 'pesticide residues' bit. Here's some info:

All foods for human consumption have to meet a Minimum Residue Limit (MRL) for pesticides by law. These limits are set way below a level that could cause any danger to health. For baby food (i.e under 36 months), these already low levels are set even lower. No baby food – that’s a complete meal - can contain more than 3 parts per billion of pesticide residues. This means that regardless of whether the ingredients used are organic or non-organic, the end meals have to be almost completely free of residues. These levels are so low that only 3 labs in all of Europe can detect to this level of sensitivity. And it costs a lot to do the testing!

For some reason, parents think that buying organic means safe (and it's a lot easier than having to explain all of the above) - so it might be easier for you to get sales that way. But it will mean you have to charge a lot more for your meals, which might reduce the number of sales you make. Depends who you're targeting them at and where you plan on selling them.

I wuld be unlikely to buy ready-meals anyway, but not fussed if organic or not.