DIY Organic Baby Food: 5 Tips

With recent concerns about melamine showing up in baby food and baby formula, additives being linked to ADHD and the prospect of other unsavory ingredients finding their way into conventional store-bought baby food, many parents are looking to the past for help raising their baby. Making your own food -- and keeping it organic, so as to minimize any exposure to toxic chemicals -- is the rule of the road.

Alexandra Zissu, The Daily Green's Ask an Organic Mom blogger and an author of The Complete Organic Pregnancy, offers these five tips:

1. Use Glass Storage Containers

In an effort to stock up on homemade options, most families puree big batches, then separate them into ice cube trays for storage. While the resulting squares are perfect serving size for tiny tummies, parents who want to avoid plastic can either troll the Internet for hours in search of stainless steel ice cube trays (not easy to find!) or stock up on glass storage containers.

Canning jars are an obvious option, as they come in many sizes, and double as great on-the-go carriers. Reusing glass baby food jars is another excellent option. There are also now many small sizes of other glass containers on the market, perfect for this sort of prep work. Just leave enough room for the food to expand if you're freezing, and so it doesn't touch the lid, which is usually (unmarked) plastic.

Bonus: after the babe is eating like other members of the family, these will still be useful, unlike random plastic items only intended for baby's earliest foods. There's nothing less green than kiddie gear that is only designed to work for a few months.


2. Buy "Super Baby Food"

This must-have book by Ruth Yaron ($15.96 at BarnesandNoble.com) doesn't touch on organics really, and her suggestions to reuse plastic containers and bags to save money are outdated at best by the information we now all have on what can migrate out of certain plastics, including plastics meant for one use only, and into your baby's food. But her food ideas are helpful and a lot different than what you'll hear from your pediatrician.

She suggests making your own (organic, I say) brown rice cereal, since what you find on the shelves in boxes has been sitting there for who knows how long, and explains that the nutrients are lost shortly after being pulverized. We did make our own, and we also have her to thank for putting some protein-filled whole grains we'd forgotten about or never even bothered with back into all of our lives (millet, amaranth, etc.).

Follow it rule for rule if you're interested, or tailor it to your own needs (that's what we did). Either way, it's absolutely worth a read. Don't neglect to cross-reference her list of what foods to introduce at what age with your own pediatrician's suggestions.

Blender

3. Use the Blender (and the Steamer)

If you're buying new, resist the urge to buy teeny tiny ones that will only be useful for a few months at best. Purees are a brief stage of life, and a blender lasts a long time. The greenest option is to use an appliance that will last the longest and be used the most.

Anything you can steam you can blend into a puree. Certain things don't even need to be steamed (nectarines in season? heaven.) And that's homemade baby food making 101.

(Photo credit: Marko Metzinger/Studio D)


4. Join a CSA Farm

Organic food is a must for growing babies. Pound for pound they're taking in more of the pesticide residues than us adults are. Don't skimp.

The cheapest way to get local/organic food is to get a share in a Community Supported Agriculture farm. To find one near you, input your zip code into the "Get Local Info" tool on The Daily Green homepage.


5. Use Real Spoons (And Regular Old Plates)

What's the point of plastic baby spoons? I haven't quite figured it out. Especially not the ones that change colors if the food is hot. Um, can't you use your finger or your own mouth to test that?! Generations before us certainly managed not to scald the kids.

Speaking of, if you can get your grandmother or your parents to find old silver baby spoons and bequeath them to you, do it. (Shine with toothpaste only!) If not, the small stainless steel ones sold at just about every kitchen supply store as cocktail or espresso spoons are the perfect size, not to mention more attractive.

There's also no reason to feed babies on plastic plates. Most kiddie ware is melamine -- not exactly the greatest material, as we've all recently learned. Ceramic and glass works just fine until the tots are sitting up and banging everything around. At that point, tried and true stainless steel prep bowls, enamelware, and sturdier ceramics do the trick.

No time to make your own? Try these off-the-shelf organic baby food brands.

Related Links
Ask an Organic Mom
Eat Natural: Top 10 Food Sources of Vitamin C
The Dirty Dozen: 12 Foods to Eat Organic
Top Green Food Tips
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Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.