Baby rejects Baby Organix!

[florenceuk]

In the last week, DS (7.5 mths) has rejected Baby Organix Mediterranean Chicken, Fruity Chicken, the Banana Porridge cereal (dry), and those little pasta shapes. Actually I suspect he doesn't like the tomato taste, but seems to be a bit of a thumbs-down for the Baby Organix range! Well, he does like the little jars of fruit but he'll eat most sweet things (puzzled by the rejection of the cereal though). We're going on holiday on Sunday and I'm wondering if there is a jar food that he'll actually eat??? What's your favourite brand? We're going somewhere in the French Alps, so I'm not sure how much baby food there will be there anyway.

He does seem to have a sweet tooth - most of his meals seem to consist of sweet potato or carrot mixed in with something else. Will happily eat blander veges like broccoli or courgettes, but a tomato-based mixture failed miserably. But it is a struggle getting jars of carrot down, and he has also rejected the Simply Heinz mixtures of broccoli and cauliflower, pea and parsnip etc etc. Have been a bit suspicious of the "chicken noodle casserole" jars so far but may be forced to try them - any suggestions (other than taking my blender on holiday)?

my ds - same age - had his first jar last week, after the car central locked itself with us outside in barnes high street at 5pm in the rain! I bought 2 hipp organic - cheesy veggy pasta, and veg 7 chicken risotto - figuring he would eat at least one of them. Lucky I bought a sachet of banana porrige as well, as he refused them both (and he NEVER turns his nose up at food at home). I must admit, I don't blame him. I tasted them, they were both disgusting and at the very centre of the taste very bland and watery. My motto is 'if you wouldn't eat it yourself, don't feed it to your kid!'. I know it's a pain, but if you're going self catering you could cook up enough veggies etc the first morning to get you through 4 or 5 days. Also - don't bother with a blender. I always take a sharp knife (packed in suitcase, not hand luggage!) with me, as holiday cottages never have one. This year I'm taking a peeler and a masher as well. My ds now eats finely diced things as well. Also, fresh spinach & ricotta tortellini, or something similar, cook up quickly and would mash easily with a little milk or cream. Left over risotto is good. Ds is having left over trout from last nights dinner flaked into some veggies today. If you plan a bit it shouldn't be too difficult. Having said that, I'm off for 2 weeks soon. I'll let you know if it really is that easy when I get back

My ds hated food from a jar or packet and I dont blame him. He has always had blended veg etc, not pureed, and I think by about 8 months or so I was just cutting everything into very small pieces and he was really having everything we had with a few exceptions. He also had favs of sweet potato, carrot etc. Oh and he did love the fruit in a jar, the pureed type and still does sometimes.

My dh cousins little girl used to be nearly sick on some jarred food but they still carried on feeding it to her saying she will stop soon, she must have hated it.

florenceuk, the same thing happened with my ds at about that age. It seemed that the problem was with the texture of the Baby Organix range - he was ready for something a bit lumpier. When we added chopped up bits of ordinary pasta, peas, bits of meat etc. to the jars it went down a better. We've moved to the Hipp Organic range now as it's a lot lumpier.

It could also be that he'd prefer finger food, so you could give, bread, rice cakes etc with the food from the jar spread on top. Although my ds worked this one out and will take the plain rice cakes and throw the ones with toppings on!

Have a good holiday.

I AM taking my blender on holiday tomorrow! MY ds will only eat home cooked food most of the time and I really don't find it such a hassle (he eats stuff like chicken risotto and lasagne that we make for ourselves. When we're out we sometimes mash up a pasta dish with a fork and follow it up with banana. He also loves bread & hummus or pate etc. We're taking a couple of jars for the journey in case of emergencies, but will have to manage with b/milk, bread and bananas if that fails. Are you self catering?

hi florenceuk

a number of thoughts. my ds (11m) only got to like the taste of tomato in the last couple of months - maybe it is a little acidic for them? - anyway he is fine with it now. no difference in reaction to home cooked v. jar tomato.

i only buy jars from baby organix and heinz organic ranges. having becoming a fanatical label reader, i have found these to be the best in terms of proportions of ingredients (i.e. fruit purees are 98% - 100% fruit, whereas e.g. Sainsbury's organic peach puree is only 55% fruit, the rest is juice and water!), no fillers (such as baby rice) and never any salt or sugar added. i found Hipp Organic didn't stand up too well to label scrutiny.

how is your ds with finger foods? we recently went on holiday to Italy and found a very poor range of baby food available (apologies to any Italian contributors, perhaps we just didn't know where to look) - most of which had salt/sugar added. finger foods saved the day for us there.

some suggestions for no/low cook food - not jars:
cereals
ricecakes
fresh soft fruits e.g. banana, avocado, strawberries, papaya
dried fruits e.g. sultanas
lots of different breads
cheeses
french toast or hardboiled egg
tuna mayonnaise
yoghurt
fromage frais

hth and have a wonderful holiday!

I think your babies all sound a lot more adaptable than mine! I've tried to feed him rice and pasta and so far he is having none of it - just gags and lets it dribble down his face. Not sure if it is the taste or the texture - puzzling because I think I was actually weaned on rice porridge, and I'd like him to like rice. He doesn't seem to mind those little rice cakes. However just rang up my friend and apparently the house where we are staying has a mouli - so I guess I will be cooking!

We're not keen on the Organix jars either. I tasted some of them after mine turned their noses up and didn't blame them.

Our favourites are the Heinz Organic ones, although we rarely use jars.

florenceuk - my dd turns her nose up at all of the organix range - I've got a fair few just sitting in my cupborad!
On the other hand she really enjoys Hipp Organic jars - most definitely Pasta and Pork (HUGE hit), but also other tomato based ones (spaghetti and mozzarella, lasagne etc). The tomato taste is not as sharp as with the organix.

I think all jarred foods are pretty grim but the only ones dd would touch were the Olvarit ones.

Of all the jars around the only make my 10 month old DS seems to really like is the Boots International range - some of which actually smell quite appetising. Sweet and sour pork balls is the curent favourite. Just a shame they're not organic.

If anyone gets the oportunity look in the french supermarkets their jars have some nice flavours and they do a lot of fish which seems to go down well with babies.

Florenceuk

My son did the gaging thing when I first started to give him pasta, in fact he was actually sick. However I had read that this might happen and I've continued to give it to him and now it's fine (most of the time).

In fact this is what I've done with everything and so far it's always worked. Though after opening a jar of organix (chiken and mango chutney or something like that) I have never tried them again, it was so strong and if I found it to strong I could hardly expect ds to eat it!.

Carrieboo - agree entirely on the French baby foods - my DS loved them, and I jsut wish I'd stocked up with more than I did while we were there. I like the way they do a lot of dual flavour jars too - so they get seperate flavours of the meat and vegetables - just like a real meal.

There's a new range of Heinz jars which are just veg, and manly organic - they're not really jars, they're wee plastic tubs. They certainly went down fairly well with my ds. I dont usually feed him from jars/packets as dd used to get really constipated when I did (not very often either) but these seem to be pretty good as there is nothing in them except the veg or fruit.

GillW

My sentiments exactly. Even though I new he really liked them I only came home with two (the ones that where left from the holiday), so stupid. I too found the dual layer ones and I thnik they are a fantastic idea, it means they get all the different flavours but not mixed into one big mud pie so to speak. I was particularly happy that they where not all orange like the majority of English ones, carrot stains are so hard to get out of clothes!

One thing that did confuse me was that the jars labbled 6m had no lumps at all and the ones labbled 8m had only minnimal lumps, I don't know at what age they start feeding their children proper lumps as we never bought any higher age jars.

A word in defence/praise of Baby Organix, it's the only one i give my baby, he thinks it's all delicious and gobbles it down, also it's the only one I don't mind having to taste/check temp as they all seem to taste like home cooking. I also love the fact that they introduce babies to flavours like cinnamon with lamb, chicken with spices etc. I just had a chat with the manager of our local Fresh and Wild because they only stock Hipp (German) and Babynat (French), which isn't great given the stores' claim to be helping the environment, why can't they support a British company?

I found the Organix ones tasted nicer than Hipp from my taste tests. Hipp seemed really bland and samey. And yes, Hipp didn't stand up to the Label Test as well as Organix although I was happy to consider any "additive" which I would use in cooking. When making home made food I would add baby rice to improve the texture of too runny purees for example or use water to thin a very thick one (does that make sense??).

DS1 had mainly home made stuff but poor DS2 had to make do with mostly jars. Mind you, he did get a homemade blueberry one which was a fantastic shade of purple and a raspberry one which was bright pink - V scarey when DS2 was sick in the night...

Talking about introducing interesting flavours - have you tried the Boots International Range? DS loves the Sweet & Sour pork one - and it does actually smell quite appetising.