Vegetable baby pouches

[SunWarrior]

Hopefully this won’t turn into mum bashing and calling them lazy or whatever thread , I just want to hear the opinions.
So I have a 2 year old who’s generally pretty ok with his food but as 2 year olds can be, he’s quite fussy with his veggies and usually I have it hide it inside a sauce or something.
Since he was weaned I never bought any of the ready made veg baby pouches. I bought and still buy the fruit ones because they are good to mix it with the yoghurt. But recently I have started to buy the veg ones and mix with pasta/noodles/potatoes/meat to make a delicious sauces and quite honestly I love them too, they taste really delicious.
The question is are they still same good source of veggies as you would make it from the scratch? I mean they have carrots/parsnips/swede etc inside them so I thought it would be easier to get some veggies into my DS.

Could you not make your own big batch of mixed veggie sauce and freeze in portions. Its got to be cheaper than buying individual pouches.

That's a very expensive way of getting veggies in!
But in principle, I don't see a problem.

There is nothing wrong with them. Its just really expensive.

It does sound expensive, but a good idea.

You can buy veg soup mixes which are pre prepared veggies for soup bases. Boil them up and then purée down with a hand held blender and make your own with little effort.

I'm all for easy effort though so if it works for you crack on.

There's probably a very small quantity of veg for a two year old in a pouch - it's better than no veg at all but I would use them as a stepping stone towards making your own. Also, some of the veggie ones contain apple or use sweet vegetables to make them more appealing.

Check the ingredients of the pouch. They are usually 90% apple puree, even the veggies ones. (If not apple then carrot or rice)

You are better off making your own large batch of carrot puree and freezing.

I'd say better than nothing, but if you look at ingredients there's often apple added (and then there's most of it in a pouch) and at least 25% of each pouch is added water. So much cheaper and more nutritious would be to make a big batch of your own as pp said.

I cannot imagine a veg pouch mixed with pasta tasting good 🤢

I always went with the ethos, told to me by a wonderful Health Visitor, which was 'would you eat this ( powdered, jarred, tinned' and now pouched) food yourself?
She said 'if the answer is no then why would you feed it to your child?'

No, I wouldn't eat veg out of a pouch.

Pouches are heat treated so they have a long shelf life. Because of this, the level of nutrients is lower than making your own.

@GlassBunion I love your HV! So true, I was told off for not offering baby rice (mine got what was on my plate mushed with a fork to taste) , I said why on earth would anyone want to eat it! I also always said why would anyone want to eat a jar of baby food

I used to add a knob of butter and mash down our surplus veggies (from the night before - I cooked extra, no salt) for the following day's lunch and tea.
Couldn't be faffed with shopping for pouches, opening them, squeezing stuff out, rinsing the pouches out to recycle, taking pouches to recycling point etc sounds too much faff. (pouches not readily available when mine were small)

To make fussy child eat it when not disguised as a pasta sauce or whatever, I would pile it on to a plate with a spoon and make faces with a fork - so carrot hair, pile of pea eyes, bit of ketchup as lips and let them eat it with fingers if necessary.

Brilliant @Ariela

Sounds very similar to when mine were little.

I used to mouli our food. It was like a sieve with a rotating blade that smoothed the food but wasn't liquid or smooth. A bit of texture then after a while I just forked.

I did buy Heinz Pure Apple as Apple was the only ingredient... it was for apple sauce for my diabetic husband.