Which is healthier making your own puree baby food or buying the gerbers stuff?
Making your own anything is always healthier because you control how clean the food is and you know where the blender/food processor/knives have been. You’re also controlling which foods are going into the food–organic, not organic, home grown, etc. You also control the texture and any spices, sugars, etc. you are adding. However, Gerber is much more convenient and it’s sterilized and sealed off. It all depends on what you’re comfortable with.
Healthier – making your own. Like so many have said there are less fillers and additives and there is way more selection in the produce section than the baby food aisle. Have you ever seen rutabaga offered in jars by Gerber? Yet it’s one of my boy’s favorites. As for it being inconvenient to make your own, I don’t find it to be that hard. Really it doesn’t take long to peel, chop and boil/bake the food. My son prefers most of his foods mashed so I don’t even need the food processor most of the time. Scoop it into ice cube trays and freeze then transfer to labeled Ziploc bags. You can provide a much greater variety of foods and all you have to do is defrost and serve. On good days I remember to take things out early enough to thaw on the counter or in the fridge overnight. Jarred foods though were good in the beginning because I could buy just one or two jars of something and use that for allergy testing. Gave a good starting base of foods I knew he could eat while I introduced things n
There have been a lot of changes with baby food, so I don’t think that it’s a matter of what is healthier anymore. There are many choices with baby food and it’s really what you feel comfortable with. Always check labels if you are in doubt. When my daughter was small, I made my own and froze it in ice cube trays. It was great because all you had to do was thaw it, warm it up and you were good to go!
I just asked a similar question, only mine wondered about commercial organic food versus homemade non-organic food. I am not so sure that homemade is always better, especially if you are using pesticide ridden produce and you are comparing it to organic baby foods. Other baby food companies, like Beech-nut, use conventionally grown produce but monitor the level of pesticides in them, which is not something you can do at home. And with some vegetables–like carrots, for example– you might be better off getting it from a baby food jar because at least the baby food companies are required to monitor the nitrate levels in them. This is something you also cannot do at home. Also, from the research I have done, most baby food companies have stopped adding sugar and salt to stage 1 and 2 baby foods, so the argument that baby food jars is packed with salt and sugar are just plain false. Anyways, unfortunately I don’t have an answer for you. I am still biased towards making my own food out of
