Since my son started to eat solids I have been on a hunt to find good organic baby food that doesn’t taste like a**. Not that I’ve tasted a** but I do taste everything before I give it to him and some of the jarred food i have tried tastes how I imagine a** would. I started off by making some of my own food until I found a great brand available in Canada that has simple ingredients free of fillers and words I can’t pronouce. I would love to tell you I make all of his food but that would be a big fat lie. I also would tell you I felt guilty about that until I found these great products I’m about to share with you. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes when I have had nothing but a pooping, drooling, but very cute silent type small male to hang with all day for weeks on end getting out into the adult world to shop for strange vegetables to blend into a sloppy goup sounds fun. But I’d have to say online shopping for them and unwrapping the large present that shows up at my door a few days later is much more fun.
I’ll start with the brand I found in stores here in Vancouver called Baby Gourmet. This stuff is amazing! Keep in mind the price differs from store to store as I found it at Whole Foods for $1.77 and at Superstore for $1.47. not a huge price difference but every cent counts when you have a little person considering you have to pay for it on the way out too. I found every flavour was delicious and the textures were great. Although, after getting through the first simple single flavours (most of which I homemade as things like sweet potatoes and carrots were only available from those nasty jarred brands) going by the age levels didn’t really matter. For example, my son was eating packs from levels 1 through 3 right from the word go. The packages are easy for on the go as they are like little tetra juice packs with screw on lids that can be squeezed right onto a spoon. This way if babe doesn’t finish the whole thing and you want to use it later you don’t have to worry about germs making babies in there. The only thing I didn’t like about this brand was that it only had a limited number of flavours (15 in total) and after a few months I felt like this could get boring really fast.
So my search ventured online for other brands that offered similar ingredients that tasted good….not like a**. I found three other brands that looked worthy of a taste but trying to find companies that would ship to Canada took a few days. Eventually I stumbled upon EcoMom (www.ecomom.com). Here I was able to find what I needed and have it shipped right to my front door. I understand this may not have been the cheaper route to take (I haven’t really added it up and figured out if it was cost effective or not) but in my opinion feeding my children right is super important. You only get one body and what you put in it matters a lot.
My second favorite brand is Happy Baby. These flavours has some amazing savoury options, with Chick Chick being my son’s favourite. They contain great things like quinoa and salboa alongside veggies, meats, and fruits. The training meals offered a great next step into thicker foods and their fruit options had some great additions hidden inside like beets. I was also able to find organic puffs made with kale and spinach
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My third favourite brand was Plum Organics. This company makes fruit blends with the same neat things like beets hidden inside. They also add great grains like quinoa into their fruit blends like Happy Baby. My son’s favourites were Apple Raisin Quinoa and Fruit and Grain Mish Mash (tastes exactly like homemade apple crumble). The only thing I didn’t like was that I found that some of the savoury flavours has a very fine grainy texture to them. I think this may be the rice flour? My son didn’t seem to complain though. They make some great vegetarian training meals as well. Puffs are also available in flavours like Strawberry Beet.
Last is Ella’s Kitchen. This brand has some great options but I have yet to be super impressed with the flavours. My son seems to like the Raisin Prune Baby Brekkie and since he eats so much I like to throw prunes in there every couple days so we don’t end up with an “issue”. I tried the Blueberry Pear Baby Brekkie and almost puked but my nanny said today that she thought it was good so who knows. The packaging is fun and I wish I loved it more but it’s not a brand I will likely purchase a lot of again, at least not the fruits (I found the savoury flavours to not be too bad).
All in all, I am happy I found what I did because I don’t feel like I have to spend the baby’s nap times by chopping up a bunch of boring stuff and blending it into mush. Baby Gourmet and Happy Baby are a huge success with Plum Organics coming in right behind. I would buy the Ella’s Kitchen savoury flavours but not too many of the fruit blends. Happy shopping! Put down the blender and go get a mani pedi or take a nap because the world has finally progressed from the little jars of a** that were available to our mums into a wonderful new age of organic baby foods!
canadianmum 