April 2007
Baby food
Consumer Reports Video  |
| BUYING ADVICE | |
  |
Organic Baby Food |
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When your baby is 4 to 6 months old and meets some key developmental markers--he sits up with support, holds his neck steady,
and shows good head control--a whole new world of tastes and textures opens up. That's when most babies are ready to start
mouthing and chewing "solid" food. It's mushy and messy, but it's an important and exciting milestone.
Your baby is ready for a real-food fest when he reaches twice his birth weight. If you eat with your baby at meals, you'll begin to notice entrée envy: He may reach out and grab for the food you're eating. And you'll be able to spoon-feed your baby without resistance. At about 4 months, most babies lose the tongue-thrust reflex, the tendency for an infant to push his tongue against the roof of his mouth when a spoon is inserted. Still, your baby has a way to go before he is nibbling from your plate.
The first solid food your baby will eat is likely to be a soupy mixture of a tablespoon or two of dry infant rice cereal combined with breast milk or formula. Breast milk or formula will be on the menu until your baby is a year old or so and makes the switch to soy, rice, or cow's milk. If your baby doesn't demonstrate an allergic response--rashes, repeated vomiting, diarrhea, or constant fussiness--after three to five days, you can gradually make the cereal thicker. When your baby is 6 months or so, you can begin to introduce, one at a time, yogurt, oatmeal, barley, wheat, and pureed fruits, vegetables, and meats that you buy in jars or make yourself.
When your baby is 7 to 10 months old, you can try bite-size foods, such as Cheerios, pieces of bread, well-cooked pasta, avocado, cheese, and meats cut up for easy chewing. Your pediatrician will be your best source of advice about what to feed your baby and when, and what to do if you hit a snag--if, say, your baby rejects certain foods or suddenly starts eating less (not unusual when a baby is teething). At each well-child visit, starting at about 4 months, you'll probably get a new list of foods your baby can eat and a list of what to avoid, such as peanut butter. (It's generally a no-no until at least age 2.) You may be told to introduce foods one at a time to make sure your baby isn't allergic to them. Always supervise your child when he's eating.
SHOPPING SECRETS
Besides scouring supermarket circulars, joining a food co-op, or buying in bulk at a wholesale price club, try these money-slashing tactics many new parents swear by:
Consider homemade. Although commercial baby food is convenient and has a certain official, "this-is-what-babies-eat" quality about it, except for rice cereal, baby food is something you can make yourself from scratch. All you need is a fork, for example, to mash bananas.
You can process fibrous foods such as sweet potatoes or meat in a baby-food grinder (found in baby stores), food processor, or blender. Before preparing food, always wash your hands and the food thoroughly, and wash your knives and cutting board with soap and water after you've cut meat, to prevent cross-contamination with meat juices.
Buy the freshest fruits and vegetables and use them within a day or two. Remove peels, seeds, and cores. Boil, bake, or steam them until soft, then purée them well. A time-saving tip: Pick one day a week to make a big batch, then freeze individual portions in ice-cube trays. Once they're frozen solid, remove the cubes and store them in plastic freezer bags in the freezer. Frozen fruits and vegetable purees will last three months; pureed meat, fish, and chicken will last up to eight weeks. Good veggies to start with are asparagus tips, avocados, squash, peas, potatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, and winter squash. Excellent first fruit choices are apples, apricots, bananas, peaches, pears, plums, and prunes.
Homemade food can go right from freezer to microwave, but make sure it's just barely warm before serving. Add water, breast milk, or formula to smooth the texture, but omit butter, oil, sugar, and salt. And don't use honey as a sweetener for babies under a year old. It can harbor bacteria related to botulism. Give the food a good stir to dissipate any hot spots before serving.
One other caveat: According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), fresh beets, turnips, carrots, collard greens, and spinach may contain nitrates, chemicals that are rich in the soil in certain parts of the country and can cause an unusual type of anemia (low red-blood-cell count) in infants up to 6 months of age. Unfortunately, you can't solve this problem by buying organic produce. The AAP recommends buying commercially prepared forms of these foods, especially when your child is an infant. Baby food companies screen the produce for nitrates and avoid buying these vegetables in parts of the country where the chemicals have been detected.
Shop outside the baby-food aisle. If you compare the prices of commercial baby foods to the stuff you'd eat yourself, you're apt to find a significant price difference, ounce per ounce. Fresh and canned fruits and vegetables are easy, economical alternatives to commercial baby food. Canned pumpkin, for example, is well puréed, as are many types of applesauce (buy one without added sugar). You can purée the food more at home. Baby-food cookbooks have suggestions and recipes. You might also ask your pediatrician for advice.
Come armed with coupons. In addition to coupons in newspapers and magazines, most major baby food manufacturers post special offers on their Web sites. Recently, Gerber (www.gerber.com) offered up to $45 in savings on its products to parents who joined the Growing Up Gerber Club. Beech-Nut (www.beech-nut.com) offered shoppers special savings on baby food if they sent in labels from Beech-Nut baby food products or signed up for a free monthly e-newsletter.
Shop online. Shopping online for baby food may not save you money because shipping or delivery charges factor into your total costs, but it can save you time and a trip to the supermarket, which isn't always easy to pull off when you've got a new baby on board. If your local supermarket doesn't offer online shopping, go to the source. Some manufacturers, such as Earth's Best (www.earthsbest.com), have an online store where you can order baby food directly at prices comparable to what you'd pay if you'd shopped in a brick-and-mortar store.
WHAT'S AVAILABLE
The major brands of baby food are Beech-Nut (www.beech-nut.com) and Gerber (www.gerber.com), including Recetas Latinas, for the Latin market. The major organic lines are Earth's Best (www.earthsbest.com) and Gerber Organic.
Most pediatricians recommend starting your baby on commercial infant rice cereal. It's easy to digest and mixes easily with breast milk or formula. Some cereals have fruit, which is appropriate after your baby has mastered the plain stuff. Commercial makers of jarred baby food usually divide their product line into three stages: beginner (stage 1), intermediate (stage 2), and toddler (stage 3). Stage 1 foods are made for babies just starting on solids. They're usually a single food, puréed for easy swallowing. Beginner vegetables in jars are peas, carrots, green beans, squash, and sweet potatoes. Fruits are applesauce, bananas, peaches, pears, and prunes.
Stage 1 foods have the purest formulations without sauces or flavorings. Sweet potatoes are sweet potatoes and peas are peas. Intermediate (stage 2) foods are for more experienced eaters (at about 7 to 8 months). At this point, the choices are more interesting because foods are combined to improve taste and offer new textures, such as apples and chicken, or turkey and rice--and you don't have to open two jars. Stage 2 foods have a smooth texture, but are not as fine as beginner foods.
Stage 3 foods are for children 9 months and older, babies who are learning to chew and mash. At this stage, chunkier, larger portions, such as Gerber Organic's Herbed Chicken with Pasta, keep up with growing appetites. Some parents never bother with stage 3 but simply start giving baby normal fare, still mashed and cut up for easy chewing and swallowing. Infant juices are available, but many are no different from the kind marketed for adults. Avoid citrus juice until your pediatrician gives you the go-ahead, usually when your baby is around 6 months old. It can upset little stomachs.
In addition to fruit-juice basics such as apple and white grape, there are many combinations, some of which contain yogurt and fruit-vegetable blends. Some also have added calcium or vitamin C. Go easy on the juice, though. Too much can cause diarrhea and gas, and contribute to tooth decay. And when babies drink juice, they may take in less breast milk or formula, which contain the nutrients they really need. The AAP recommends limiting fruit juice to no more than 4 to 6 ounces per day from 6 months to 6 years of age, and making it part of a meal, not a snack. The juice your baby drinks should be pasteurized (flash-heated to kill pathogens). Fresh-squeezed juice isn't pasteurized.
Once your baby graduates to cow's milk at the one-year mark, keep in mind that juice fortified with calcium and vitamin D isn't a milk substitute. Milk has a whole package of nutrients, including riboflavin, phosphorus, zinc, and essential amino acids that help form strong bones. Fortified juice doesn't. And don't put your baby to bed with a bottle of juice or milk; that can lead to tooth decay.
THE DISH ON DHA
Beech-Nut makes a line of baby food, First Advantage, for babies 6 months and older that's fortified with DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), an essential fatty acid naturally found in breast milk and believed to promote mental and visual development. This fortified baby food line tends to cost more than organic baby food. DHA is also being added to some brands of infant formula. The scientific evidence on the benefits of food fortified with DHA is mounting, but ask your pediatrician for a recommendation. If your pediatrician encourages you to give your baby DHA-fortified foods like First Advantage, you can buy it in stores and online at www.beech-nut.com. Some brands of eggs are enriched with DHA, but you can expect to pay as much as 90 cents more per dozen.
IS ORGANIC BETTER FOR YOUR BABY?
You'll find a cornucopia of organic options in the baby food section from two major brands: Earth's Best and Gerber Organic. Natural foods markets often carry their own organic lines as well as specialty brands like Plum Organics, a line of frozen baby food. (For more information, log on to www.plumorganics.com.) Baby food labeled "USDA organic" must meet standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture and be at least 95 percent organic, meaning that all but 5 percent of the content was produced without conventional pesticides and fertilizers. Organic food can't be irradiated (a one-time exposure to radiation intended to kill pathogens such as salmonella, listeria, or E. coli), genetically modified (a technique that alters a plant's DNA), or produced with hormones or antibiotics. Animals used in meat products must be fed organically grown feed.
USDA's National Organic Program accredits certifiers and they, in turn, certify organic producers and processors. Other terms found on food labels, such as "natural," "free-range," and "hormone-free," don't mean organic. Only food that has been certified to meet the USDA organic standards can be legally labeled "organic."
Do organically grown foods contain fewer pesticide residues than conventionally grown foods do? According to our evidence, the answer is yes. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Additives and Contaminants and co-authored by a senior scientist at Consumers Union showed that organic foods had residues of fewer pesticides that were present at lower levels than those found on conventionally grown foods. In general, foods produced organically or conventionally contain the same kinds and amounts of vitamins and minerals.
ORGANIC FOR LESS
If you buy organic food for your baby, or your whole family, it will cost you. In our informal research, we paid about 25 percent more for jarred organic baby food than for nonorganic versions (about 17 cents more on each 2.5-ounce jar of baby food). Still, there are ways to save. Try these thrifty tips:
Supermarket comparison-shop. Check several local grocery stores to find the lowest prices on frequently purchased organic food. We found a 4-ounce jar of organic baby food in the New York area for as little as 69 cents a jar. Also, stock up on sale items. We found 4-ounce jars of store-brand organic baby food on sale for 15 percent off at a national natural foods supermarket. And keep in mind that fresh organic produce is often cheaper in season.
Hit the farmer's market. A USDA study in 2002 found that about 40 percent of these farmers don't charge a premium. Check www.localharvest.org for organic growers and market listings.
Join the farm team. Buy a share in a community-supported organic farm. The produce almost always is cheaper than at a farmer's market and often costs less than the same nonorganic items at a supermarket. Go to www.sare.org for a list of community-supported farms, then contact the farms in your area and ask if they're certified organic. They should be able to produce evidence of certification or, if they sell less than $5,000 worth of produce a year, other documentation that shows they follow organic growing practices, says Barbara Haumann, a spokeswoman for the Organic Trade Association in Greenfield, Mass.
Buy in bulk. Some organic baby food lines, such as Earth's Best, sell packs of 24 2.5-ounce jars at a savings of about 4 cents per jar over single-jar purchases.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Let your pediatrician be your guide about what to feed your baby and when to move to the next stage. Compare the ingredients and nutritional value of commercial baby food and always check expiration dates listed on the label or lid. All baby food jars have a depressed area, or "button," in the center of the lid. Reject any jars with a popped-out button--an indication that the product has been opened or the seal broken.
Your baby is ready for a real-food fest when he reaches twice his birth weight. If you eat with your baby at meals, you'll begin to notice entrée envy: He may reach out and grab for the food you're eating. And you'll be able to spoon-feed your baby without resistance. At about 4 months, most babies lose the tongue-thrust reflex, the tendency for an infant to push his tongue against the roof of his mouth when a spoon is inserted. Still, your baby has a way to go before he is nibbling from your plate.
The first solid food your baby will eat is likely to be a soupy mixture of a tablespoon or two of dry infant rice cereal combined with breast milk or formula. Breast milk or formula will be on the menu until your baby is a year old or so and makes the switch to soy, rice, or cow's milk. If your baby doesn't demonstrate an allergic response--rashes, repeated vomiting, diarrhea, or constant fussiness--after three to five days, you can gradually make the cereal thicker. When your baby is 6 months or so, you can begin to introduce, one at a time, yogurt, oatmeal, barley, wheat, and pureed fruits, vegetables, and meats that you buy in jars or make yourself.
When your baby is 7 to 10 months old, you can try bite-size foods, such as Cheerios, pieces of bread, well-cooked pasta, avocado, cheese, and meats cut up for easy chewing. Your pediatrician will be your best source of advice about what to feed your baby and when, and what to do if you hit a snag--if, say, your baby rejects certain foods or suddenly starts eating less (not unusual when a baby is teething). At each well-child visit, starting at about 4 months, you'll probably get a new list of foods your baby can eat and a list of what to avoid, such as peanut butter. (It's generally a no-no until at least age 2.) You may be told to introduce foods one at a time to make sure your baby isn't allergic to them. Always supervise your child when he's eating.
SHOPPING SECRETS
Besides scouring supermarket circulars, joining a food co-op, or buying in bulk at a wholesale price club, try these money-slashing tactics many new parents swear by:
Consider homemade. Although commercial baby food is convenient and has a certain official, "this-is-what-babies-eat" quality about it, except for rice cereal, baby food is something you can make yourself from scratch. All you need is a fork, for example, to mash bananas.
You can process fibrous foods such as sweet potatoes or meat in a baby-food grinder (found in baby stores), food processor, or blender. Before preparing food, always wash your hands and the food thoroughly, and wash your knives and cutting board with soap and water after you've cut meat, to prevent cross-contamination with meat juices.
Buy the freshest fruits and vegetables and use them within a day or two. Remove peels, seeds, and cores. Boil, bake, or steam them until soft, then purée them well. A time-saving tip: Pick one day a week to make a big batch, then freeze individual portions in ice-cube trays. Once they're frozen solid, remove the cubes and store them in plastic freezer bags in the freezer. Frozen fruits and vegetable purees will last three months; pureed meat, fish, and chicken will last up to eight weeks. Good veggies to start with are asparagus tips, avocados, squash, peas, potatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, and winter squash. Excellent first fruit choices are apples, apricots, bananas, peaches, pears, plums, and prunes.
Homemade food can go right from freezer to microwave, but make sure it's just barely warm before serving. Add water, breast milk, or formula to smooth the texture, but omit butter, oil, sugar, and salt. And don't use honey as a sweetener for babies under a year old. It can harbor bacteria related to botulism. Give the food a good stir to dissipate any hot spots before serving.
One other caveat: According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), fresh beets, turnips, carrots, collard greens, and spinach may contain nitrates, chemicals that are rich in the soil in certain parts of the country and can cause an unusual type of anemia (low red-blood-cell count) in infants up to 6 months of age. Unfortunately, you can't solve this problem by buying organic produce. The AAP recommends buying commercially prepared forms of these foods, especially when your child is an infant. Baby food companies screen the produce for nitrates and avoid buying these vegetables in parts of the country where the chemicals have been detected.
Shop outside the baby-food aisle. If you compare the prices of commercial baby foods to the stuff you'd eat yourself, you're apt to find a significant price difference, ounce per ounce. Fresh and canned fruits and vegetables are easy, economical alternatives to commercial baby food. Canned pumpkin, for example, is well puréed, as are many types of applesauce (buy one without added sugar). You can purée the food more at home. Baby-food cookbooks have suggestions and recipes. You might also ask your pediatrician for advice.
Come armed with coupons. In addition to coupons in newspapers and magazines, most major baby food manufacturers post special offers on their Web sites. Recently, Gerber (www.gerber.com) offered up to $45 in savings on its products to parents who joined the Growing Up Gerber Club. Beech-Nut (www.beech-nut.com) offered shoppers special savings on baby food if they sent in labels from Beech-Nut baby food products or signed up for a free monthly e-newsletter.
Shop online. Shopping online for baby food may not save you money because shipping or delivery charges factor into your total costs, but it can save you time and a trip to the supermarket, which isn't always easy to pull off when you've got a new baby on board. If your local supermarket doesn't offer online shopping, go to the source. Some manufacturers, such as Earth's Best (www.earthsbest.com), have an online store where you can order baby food directly at prices comparable to what you'd pay if you'd shopped in a brick-and-mortar store.
WHAT'S AVAILABLE
The major brands of baby food are Beech-Nut (www.beech-nut.com) and Gerber (www.gerber.com), including Recetas Latinas, for the Latin market. The major organic lines are Earth's Best (www.earthsbest.com) and Gerber Organic.
Most pediatricians recommend starting your baby on commercial infant rice cereal. It's easy to digest and mixes easily with breast milk or formula. Some cereals have fruit, which is appropriate after your baby has mastered the plain stuff. Commercial makers of jarred baby food usually divide their product line into three stages: beginner (stage 1), intermediate (stage 2), and toddler (stage 3). Stage 1 foods are made for babies just starting on solids. They're usually a single food, puréed for easy swallowing. Beginner vegetables in jars are peas, carrots, green beans, squash, and sweet potatoes. Fruits are applesauce, bananas, peaches, pears, and prunes.
Stage 1 foods have the purest formulations without sauces or flavorings. Sweet potatoes are sweet potatoes and peas are peas. Intermediate (stage 2) foods are for more experienced eaters (at about 7 to 8 months). At this point, the choices are more interesting because foods are combined to improve taste and offer new textures, such as apples and chicken, or turkey and rice--and you don't have to open two jars. Stage 2 foods have a smooth texture, but are not as fine as beginner foods.
Stage 3 foods are for children 9 months and older, babies who are learning to chew and mash. At this stage, chunkier, larger portions, such as Gerber Organic's Herbed Chicken with Pasta, keep up with growing appetites. Some parents never bother with stage 3 but simply start giving baby normal fare, still mashed and cut up for easy chewing and swallowing. Infant juices are available, but many are no different from the kind marketed for adults. Avoid citrus juice until your pediatrician gives you the go-ahead, usually when your baby is around 6 months old. It can upset little stomachs.
In addition to fruit-juice basics such as apple and white grape, there are many combinations, some of which contain yogurt and fruit-vegetable blends. Some also have added calcium or vitamin C. Go easy on the juice, though. Too much can cause diarrhea and gas, and contribute to tooth decay. And when babies drink juice, they may take in less breast milk or formula, which contain the nutrients they really need. The AAP recommends limiting fruit juice to no more than 4 to 6 ounces per day from 6 months to 6 years of age, and making it part of a meal, not a snack. The juice your baby drinks should be pasteurized (flash-heated to kill pathogens). Fresh-squeezed juice isn't pasteurized.
Once your baby graduates to cow's milk at the one-year mark, keep in mind that juice fortified with calcium and vitamin D isn't a milk substitute. Milk has a whole package of nutrients, including riboflavin, phosphorus, zinc, and essential amino acids that help form strong bones. Fortified juice doesn't. And don't put your baby to bed with a bottle of juice or milk; that can lead to tooth decay.
THE DISH ON DHA
Beech-Nut makes a line of baby food, First Advantage, for babies 6 months and older that's fortified with DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), an essential fatty acid naturally found in breast milk and believed to promote mental and visual development. This fortified baby food line tends to cost more than organic baby food. DHA is also being added to some brands of infant formula. The scientific evidence on the benefits of food fortified with DHA is mounting, but ask your pediatrician for a recommendation. If your pediatrician encourages you to give your baby DHA-fortified foods like First Advantage, you can buy it in stores and online at www.beech-nut.com. Some brands of eggs are enriched with DHA, but you can expect to pay as much as 90 cents more per dozen.
IS ORGANIC BETTER FOR YOUR BABY?
You'll find a cornucopia of organic options in the baby food section from two major brands: Earth's Best and Gerber Organic. Natural foods markets often carry their own organic lines as well as specialty brands like Plum Organics, a line of frozen baby food. (For more information, log on to www.plumorganics.com.) Baby food labeled "USDA organic" must meet standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture and be at least 95 percent organic, meaning that all but 5 percent of the content was produced without conventional pesticides and fertilizers. Organic food can't be irradiated (a one-time exposure to radiation intended to kill pathogens such as salmonella, listeria, or E. coli), genetically modified (a technique that alters a plant's DNA), or produced with hormones or antibiotics. Animals used in meat products must be fed organically grown feed.
USDA's National Organic Program accredits certifiers and they, in turn, certify organic producers and processors. Other terms found on food labels, such as "natural," "free-range," and "hormone-free," don't mean organic. Only food that has been certified to meet the USDA organic standards can be legally labeled "organic."
Do organically grown foods contain fewer pesticide residues than conventionally grown foods do? According to our evidence, the answer is yes. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Additives and Contaminants and co-authored by a senior scientist at Consumers Union showed that organic foods had residues of fewer pesticides that were present at lower levels than those found on conventionally grown foods. In general, foods produced organically or conventionally contain the same kinds and amounts of vitamins and minerals.
ORGANIC FOR LESS
If you buy organic food for your baby, or your whole family, it will cost you. In our informal research, we paid about 25 percent more for jarred organic baby food than for nonorganic versions (about 17 cents more on each 2.5-ounce jar of baby food). Still, there are ways to save. Try these thrifty tips:
Supermarket comparison-shop. Check several local grocery stores to find the lowest prices on frequently purchased organic food. We found a 4-ounce jar of organic baby food in the New York area for as little as 69 cents a jar. Also, stock up on sale items. We found 4-ounce jars of store-brand organic baby food on sale for 15 percent off at a national natural foods supermarket. And keep in mind that fresh organic produce is often cheaper in season.
Hit the farmer's market. A USDA study in 2002 found that about 40 percent of these farmers don't charge a premium. Check www.localharvest.org for organic growers and market listings.
Join the farm team. Buy a share in a community-supported organic farm. The produce almost always is cheaper than at a farmer's market and often costs less than the same nonorganic items at a supermarket. Go to www.sare.org for a list of community-supported farms, then contact the farms in your area and ask if they're certified organic. They should be able to produce evidence of certification or, if they sell less than $5,000 worth of produce a year, other documentation that shows they follow organic growing practices, says Barbara Haumann, a spokeswoman for the Organic Trade Association in Greenfield, Mass.
Buy in bulk. Some organic baby food lines, such as Earth's Best, sell packs of 24 2.5-ounce jars at a savings of about 4 cents per jar over single-jar purchases.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Let your pediatrician be your guide about what to feed your baby and when to move to the next stage. Compare the ingredients and nutritional value of commercial baby food and always check expiration dates listed on the label or lid. All baby food jars have a depressed area, or "button," in the center of the lid. Reject any jars with a popped-out button--an indication that the product has been opened or the seal broken.
