Baby Food Jars vs Home Made?

[JacksonClan]

Is is a bad thing to just use jars? Even the Hipp Organics Range?
I have a 5 month old who is enjoying his first tastes. I do not have a freezer so its is hard to cook somthng for each meal (3 at the moment)everyday.

Any comments will be appreciate it.

Personally I am going BLW route when ds2 is 6 months, will save all the faffing with purees etc. However when i weaned ds1 i did mainly homemade purees but used hipp for when out and about.

I used a mixture of Baby led weaning, Plum brand purees and homemade - fruit and veg purees will last a couple of days in the fridge, and they are much cheaper than jars.

I have used lots of jars with ds3 and he's fine and I don't spend my whole life peeling and pureeing. The only thing is I think that he's not getting the tastiest option and its probably not as healthy as homemade, but its ok. Does the job but you do lose a few Perfect Parents Points.

I used a mixture of jars and home made food when weaning.

Jars certainly have their place when you are out somewhere, but don't forget things like bananas which they can have from a fairly young age. My DS is 2 and fairly fussy with his food and I think too much use of jars can encourage that as they are kind of gloopy and mushy.

I don't think there's anything wrong with jars. The problem is that there's not much right with them either. They won't harm him, but neither are they particularly nutritionally useful. Plus they taste awful.

I didn't have a freezer when I weaned dd either. At such a young age, it's not really about filling them up on 3 cooked meals a day, it's just letting them gradually get to know food - taste, feel, the rhythm of mealtimes, the social aspect.

There are plenty of foods you can give your LO that only take 10 minutes to put on the table.

I was one of those mothers who vowed to feed ds only "natural home cooked food" which was great until we were held up somewhere and he would not even countenance a jar (and never did!). This made life slightly more difficult than it need have been.

So with dd there was always a mix of jars and home cooked, so if I was ill, or we had a long journey or I was just to damn tired after work, a jar was always an option.

I think it's not a bad thing to use jars, just unnecessarily expensive for you and horribly bland for your DC. I think DS had about 4 jars of babyfood in total.

Do you have an ice box in your fridge cause you could make some mush yourself and put it in ice cube trays. I think it is sensible to combine the two. If you make it yourself you can give them sweet potato, swede, carrots, butternut squash etc etc - things you can't always get in jars.
I did this with my dd and she eats anything now (except raw cheese?!) and am going to wean my ds (5 months) shortly.

I use jars and home-made, but try to limit it to a maximum of one jar per day. I tend to go for baby cereal or rice + milk for breakfast, a jar at lunchtime, when we tend to be out and about, and something home-made at dinner time. I think that the trick for dinner time is to make something that can do both you and the baby. If you avoid salting the veg for your dinner you can just puree up whatever you're having. Saves making two different dinners.

I give jars and things such as e.g pasta, toast, scrambled eggs, mashed banana, yoghurts etc. Fruit is easy to do on the day (esp when they start with lumpy food). Main meals he has jars. Theres nothing wrong with them. I dont feel like i need to "explain" why i dont cook every meal from scratch, it doesnt make u a better or worse parent whichever u do. Now he's nearly 9months he's gradully having less jars and more things i have made myself, but yes i'd recommend jars esp from weaning to 9months. They can try a wide variety of foods that way. I'm not slagging of home cooked food either - if u have the time and choose to do this good for you. xxxxxxxxx

JacksonClan. Get yourself the Gina Ford weaning book - seriously. She makes very good suggestions, and you can just have bags of frozen cubes of different stuff and serve them up in different combinations. It's so so easy.

I usually do Hipp jars with microwaved fresh veggies added if poss for lunch. For dinner we usually do an egg or some fish and pureed peas, sweetcorn or frozen spinach. Don't forget frozen veg, tinned veg and leftovers. Makes life easier.

oh and do some BLW so LO can entertain himself with crusts / bits of apple etc while you have lunch if you are out.

One thing I done quite a lot was just puree down a bit of my dinner and give it to DD the next day. When on 3 meals, weetabix for breakfast, pureed last nights dinner for lunch and finger food buffet for tea.....don't need a freezer for that.

Thank you for all your comments. He is doing quite well now. He is having weetabix mushed with milk and natural yogurt for breakfast. Normally a jar of Hipp for lunch although i am going to try him on our leftover macaroni cheese for lunch today. and a fruit hipp jar sometimes mixed with natural yogurt for dinner. hes had some bread crusts. Very proud of him. We have very good days and then we have bad days but a suppose thats the same for most.

Um, aren't you supposed to avoid wheat and gluten until 6mo? Or has advice on that changed?

bit of a moot point now, but ideally no wheat, gluten or cows' milk till 6m

the fact that the op's ds is picking up and chomping bread crusts is a good sign he's got a mature gut though, so I reckon he'll be fine.

Most probably but he seems to enjoy it and nothing bad has happened. he is only a week and a half off 6 months anyway.

The bad thing about using a lot of jars, in my experience, is that they because they bear little resemblance to real food, a baby might then refuse real food. To a jar-fed baby, real food can seem to lumpy and has too much flavour! So personally I avoid using them too much, but nothing at all wrong with them here and there.