Baby Food Wars

RANT ALERT. If you wish, you can simply scroll to the bottom to see the pictures of my cute little boy. If you wish to read the rant: I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not believe Gerber is trying to take over the world. I do think they have seen a market opening and taken it, in a rather brilliant way.

In order for me to be able to quit working and stay home with TJ, we had to make some pretty major cost cuts and hold to a strict budget. So it stands to reason that TJ is on a budget, too. To this end, I have been making all of his baby food; baby food can be prepared at home for anywhere to 3-10 cents per ounce, whereas commercially prepared baby food is anywhere from 28-45 cents per ounce, depending upon brand names, organic, etc, etc. When I first started out on this venture a couple months ago, I was pretty nervous and intimidated. A trip to the library furnished me with all sorts of useful books, and I ground my first batch of baby cereal. I wanted to be very careful about how I made the food, what I used, etc, and so read quite alot. And the more I read, sometimes the more confused I became. One author, a PhD, advocates kiwi as the perfect first food for babies, safe starting at 4 months. Whilst another, a nutritionist, says kiwi is not suitable until at least 9 months of age (by the time I read the later, TJ had already eaten at least 3 kiwis). Introduce egg yolk at 7 months, says one. No, no, not until 10 months, says another. Almost every book had major disagreements from another, and they were all written by educated people. So then I started reading about infant physiology and nutritional needs. Interestingly, the enzymes in an infant's digestive tract are almost identical to an adults by six months of age. So all these bizarre food rules about what to feed a baby and when are driven by... what? The fear of allergies I understand. However, later introduction of a certain food does not lessen the risk of allergies; it DOES ensure an older baby with a larger (read: safer) airway, should an allergic attack occur; all wise things to be aware of if food allergies run in your family, or you suspect allergies or sensitivities in your child. So, since starting at about six months a baby's digestive tract can safely pass almost exactly what an adults' can, the real question should be more along the lines of what foods will supply a baby with the nutritional to meet his needs, not what foods are "safe" (with a few exceptions; there are foods which are more prone to carry infections, which an adults' immune system can more safely handle, and these should be avoided).
So with all this reading and thinking about food and infant feeding lately, I've been pretty aware of food relationships in general: The Kid's Menu at restaurants. Ads for bottled baby food, NOW available with DHA. And the kicker: Gerber has just launched a new line of toddler foods, which are, in essence, TV dinners for 4-year-olds. Their tag-line was something along the lines of "with Gerber, you'll only have to prepare ONE meal (for the adults); Gerber's got you covered with frozen macaroni and cheese for the kids and baby food for the infants". I'm impressed with their marketing. Really, I am. It's brilliant. And I do think Gerber is a fine company. I'm not out to decry their product. But I'm also saddened by the food-relationship babies begin developing in infancy: we feed them highly-processed, highly-refined, fortified, commercial foods their entire infancy. So mom is already used to feeding the baby something different from what the rest of the family is eating. As they get older, the graduate to... Gerber Graduates food. Again, highly-processed, highly-refined commercial foods. In essence, a diet of white bread. Is it any wonder that we have created the culture of the Kid's Menu, where children eat something different from their parents every night? Of course the things on our plate are foreign and unpalatable to them! Of course they want macaroni and cheese, or PB&J for every meal; these are processed, refined commercial foods. It's what they are familiar with, what tastes good to them. It also leads to childhood obesity. The old adage, you are what you eat? A little too true.
So although I began making TJ's babyfood from an economic and environmental standpoint, I'll continue for other reasons as well: it's healthier. It's greener. It's WAY cheaper. it's simple: he eats alot of what I eat. It's SUPER easy, now that the intimidation is gone. No special equipment needed; you DO NOT need the Beaba BabyCook babyfood maker--but Williams and Sonoma will glady sell you one for $150, which you'll then need to keep mineral-free by purchasing only the highest-quality bottled water (never mind that tap water is actually more regulated than bottled water), which Dean and Deluca will gladly sell you. Parenting can cost as much--or as little--as the consumer allows it to cost. Okay, so the excessive consumerism rant is a whole different one, and I'll try to contain myself to one rant at a time.
As TJ gets older and even MORE opinionated, he may throw temper tantrums over eating what we're eating. But for now, while I am in exclusive control of his diet, he's going to eat as much whole, unprocessed, unrefined, local and organic food as possible.
There's a pervasive myth that "it's more expensive to be green". And yet the greenest things I do are primarily driven by the need to cut costs: decrease the power bill by line drying/hang drying as much laundry as possible, cloth diaper, cook for my family, and buy locally. Ah, the irony of it all.

Now, please allow me to sweeten my rant with a few pictures of my beautiful, happy little boy:

TJ's crawling gets better and better every day. He is a super early crawler, becoming mobile before he was 7 months old. Now he's working on standing up holding onto the couch. The standing periods are pretty brief, and I haven't been able to get a picture of one yet, but here he is on his knees, having just stood and fallen back down.

Chasqui has been a bit neglected ever since TJ was born. We recently took him to the dog park to play with his nearly-forgotten doggy-friends. I think TJ had the best time of all. TJ LOVES the dog, so what could be better than a whole park, clear full of dogs? He was so happy that day:

I think Rob was pretty happy, too. Rob loves the dog park, also. What is it with boys and their dogs?