Inside The Chaotic World Of Baby Food

Nevin Barich

LOS ANGELES , September 5, 2019 (Industry Intelligence Inc.) – I have had it with baby food.

Since my son turned 6 months old (he’s 11 months now), my wife and I have been incorporating baby food into his diet. And after five months of this nonsense, I find myself longing for the days when all I had to do was give him a bottle of breast milk every three-to-four hours and consider the job done.

So where do I begin?

Well let’s start with trying to determine whether we started my son too early or too late on solids. Some parents told us we were rushing things. Others scolded us for not giving him pureed bananas when he was 3 months old. Our first pediatrician told us to wait, then he retired. Our current physician said our first pediatrician was living in the past and we should’ve started sooner. I mean, baby food has been around since, oh I don’t know, forever, so you’d think there’d be some sort of consensus by now as to when to give a child something other than breast milk or formula.

Then when you do start giving your child baby food, everyone tells you to start with single ingredients so that if he or she has some sort of allergic reaction, you as the parent know what’s causing it. And that makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense, however, is before you know it, every form of baby food that’s deemed age appropriate for your child has four-to-six ingredients in it. And most of those ingredients aren’t available in single-ingredient formats, so there’s no way for you to see if your child has an allergic reaction to it! I mean, how did we get from a jar of peas to a jar of chicken and sweet potatoes to a jar of apples, mangoes, pears, spinach and raspberries?

Get my frustration?

But then you come to find out that none of that matters. Because your child soon reaches the point where he or she doesn’t want baby food in the jar or pouch because now my son wants to eat everything with his hands. So unless I want him shoveling soft handfuls of oatmeal in his mouth, I now need to cut up actual adult food for him like chicken and blueberries so that he can use his hands and actually eat solid foods without a major battle.

So now I have all of this baby food in my cabinets that will sit there until the end of time.

Or until I have another child.

And then the chaos that is baby food can begin all over again.

Nevin Barich is the Food and Beverage Analyst for Industry Intelligence, which can help YOU better address your own industry challenges. We invite you to come take a look at our service.Call us today at 310-553-0008 and we’ll schedule you for a 15-minute demo.

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