Making your own baby food is easy, nutritious and less expensive
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By Kay Luna | Friday, August 31, 2007 |
Your baby’s crying, ready to eat.
But wait a second.
Don’t automatically reach for that jar of store-bought baby food. Why not try making your own?
The process is easy, nutritious and much less expensive than buying commercial baby food, advises Jennifer Cook-DeRosa of Silvis, Ill., a professional chef and culinary arts teacher at Scott Community College.
“It’s almost too easy,” she said.
She guarantees that anyone can whip up a month’s worth of homemade baby food in a couple of hours.
Give yourself a little more time, and maybe $50 in fresh fruits and vegetables, and you can make enough food to get Junior through to his first birthday, according to the Iowa State University Web site.
Compared with spending an estimated $500 per year on store-bought baby food, the time required is worth it, Cook-DeRosa said.
Talking over the chomping sound of her food processor, Cook-DeRosa — the mother of four boys, ages 13, 9, 7 and 3 — said she never fed her children baby food from a jar.
When her boys grew old enough to more than breast milk or formula, she began whipping up purees of simple fruits and vegetables.
Later, she moved them on to lumpier purees and a wider variety of food combinations before eventually transitioning them to table food.
“Health is one of my main concerns,” she said, talking to a small group of mothers during a baby food class she leads at the Rock Island Fitness and Activity Center. “This way, you always know what’s in the food.”
Food safety is key
Although store-bought baby food is completely healthy and safe for babies, Cook-DeRosa calls it a “convenience food” that does not offer any special ingredients or nutrients that regular food lacks.
Baby food is just regular food made at high temperatures, much like the process people use when canning food from the garden. Because heat can destroy nutrients and vitamins, baby food might have even less nutrients and vitamins than regular food, she said.
When you buy a jar of baby food carrots, that’s all it is — a jar of carrots, she added.
“Some have extra sugar, but there is no extra nutrition,” she said. “It’s just a puree. That’s it.”
Erin Williams, a nutritionist with the Women, Infants and Children program at the Rock Island County Health Department, said that if you follow some basic rules, making your own baby food might even be safer for kids because it’s free of preservatives.
It does require absolute cleanliness: hands, food, utensils, cutting boards, grinders and knives.
Another requirement is that cooks can’t add salt or sugar, and definitely not honey for children younger than 2 years, Williams said.
When babies are beginning eaters, they should consume one-ingredient foods — known as 1st foods when it comes to store-bought products — to rule out any food allergies one at a time. Then they can graduate to what baby food companies call 2nd foods, or those with a wider variety of combinations.
Pull it all together
You don’t even need a recipe, Cook-DeRosa said.
Here are some tips from the expert:
Buy fresh food wherever possible. The next best thing to buy is frozen food.
Cans of veggies and fruit are OK, too, but the taste quality goes up significantly with fresh or frozen foods.
Then, to get ideas for meals you can make, follow the example of store-bought foods. For instance, it’s common to see jars of carrots, peas and green beans for babies on store shelves.
So, buy a couple bags of fresh baby carrots, some peas and some green beans — fresh or frozen, your preference.
A common cooking method is to boil the veggies until soft, Cook-DeRosa said.
Then, pour the cooked vegetables in the food processor and turn on the machine, adding water if the texture is too thick for your baby’s eating skill level.
A typical reason why babies refuse to eat certain foods is that they’re too thick to handle, she said.
This is also a way to sneak in extra nutrients, however. By reusing the water the food was boiled it, you can recapture some of the vitamins leached out in the cooking process, she said.
To cook some items such as squash, you can bake it first to soften the food before processing.
Some babies will refuse food if it’s too bitter. Cook-DeRosa’s solution is to add applesauce — unsweetened, of course — to give it just enough sweetness to balance out the bitterness of foods such as broccoli or green beans.
“Often, babies will think something is bitter even when we don’t,” she said.
Don’t be afraid to add a dash of garlic or onion to baby food. The baby will probably like any flavors you ate while pregnant, but steer away from salt, she said.
Not all baby food needs to be cooked, either. Babies can eat many raw foods, particularly fruits, and some — bananas, for example — only need to be mashed up with a fork.
Fresh cantaloupe and honeydew melon will puree “perfectly,” she said. If it gets too watery, blend it with something else, she added.
A food processor makes the job easier, but a blender could be OK, too, depending on the type of food, she said.
Some foods to avoid include shellfish and peanuts, which some babies are allergic to. Lettuce doesn’t work well in a food processor, she added.
After taste-testing both jarred and homemade baby food, 28-year-old Mary Czerwinski of Rock Island says she definitely is going to try making her own for her infant son David.
So does Angela McCartney, 28, of Davenport, the mother of a 5½-month-old son named Kaiden.
“I want to try it so he won’t be a picky eater and he’ll already be used to the food,” said 25-year-old Kristin Huggins of Moline, who tasted baby food while her 9-day-old son, Carson, slept in a carrier at her feet. “It tastes so much better.”
Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
TRY IT YOURSELF
Learn how to make your own baby food at a class set for 1-3 p.m. Oct. 6 at the Rock Island Fitness and Activity Center.
Led by professional chef and mother of four Jennifer Cook-DeRosa, the class costs $15 and offers lessons on cooking techniques and taste-testing. Babies are welcome.
For more information, call (309) 732-7275 or register online at rigov.org.
Want to skip the class and try it on your own?
Cook-DeRosa has compiled a book, available for purchase at $10 (plus $3 for shipping) by sending an e-mail to extremehomeec@aol.com.
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