Commercial VS Home-Made Baby Food

I’m a first time mom, and just like any other moms out there, I want nothing but the best for my baby. ❤

Now that my baby is on the right month to start on solid food, I crowd-sourced on almost all moms that I know about their experiences on feeding their babies. Yeahhh, so many moms, so many questions. I can still see the annoyed faces of my friends until now. LOL.

After all the asking, research and thinking, I decided to ONLY provide my son with home-made food. I am a full time working mom by the way so I know it would be hard and time consuming to prepare. But here are a few of the things I’ve considered for this decision. I hope this would somehow help new moms decide as well. ^_^

PRESERVATIVES

Who would want to feed their child with too much preservatives? I am not the expert on food content/nutrient value. But to think that these commercial baby food has a long shelf life or expiration date, that’s given that it does contains preservatives, right? While giving home made food like mashed vegetables such as potatoes, squash, and such, you know you know for yourself that what your baby is having is really fresh.

SUGAR

All commercial baby food I found in the malls (at least in the Philippines) all have sugar content in them. I’m not sure if I miss some other which might have none. But so far it all contains sugar. You see, in food labeling, the ingredients should always come in descending order. That means the first one listed has the most amount on that particular product. I’ve made a tour in the baby food section in the mall and read the ingredients and these have SUGAR listed either as the SECOND or THIRD. I do not want my baby to be looking for sweets all the time. I want him to be as healthy as he can while I can still choose food for him (Oh baby, don’t grow up too fast!). I’m thinking that if I start to give him something sweet, he might ALWAYS ask for something sweet and won’t take anything else. So if he starts with vegetables, he won’t know there are sweeter things in life so won’t ask for them (yet). Hahaha. Well, vegetables can taste really good too if you know how to prepare, right? Right?

Synthetic/Artificial Flavors

Commercial baby food comes in a lot of different choices of flavors. It might be good to think that you have many options to feed your baby if he/she gets bored of one flavor. But you see, most of these commercial baby food does not provide the type of flavorings they add. Let’s say it says strawberry. How sure would we be that it is really Strawberries added to it, or it’s just an artificial flavoring to make it look and taste like strawberries. So another chemical (I don’t know the term as opposed to organic. Sorry. Tehehe) is added to the ingredients?

Cost

This one is self explanatory. Buying baby food is expensive. A tiny jar or pack would cost you much compared to buying vegetables or fruits. I don’t know from your place, but from the Philippines which is rich in agriculture, our vegetables and fruits really comes cheap. And at the moment, 1 potato (average size) can last up to 3 meals for my baby. 🙂 See? Big savings!

The only down side I could think is that it is really time consuming. You need to have that food processor always prepped, you gotta boil those vegetables so you can mash them. You gotta be a superhero like The Flash so you can prepare it all before all your neighbors get all cranky from your baby crying here and there. Hahaha.

Oh a quick tip from my own mom. Start with VEGETABLES. Fruits are good too but they are sweeter. There’s a chance your baby won’t like the taste of vegetables if they know there are something sweet out there. 😉

If you have any things to add or correct on the things I listed above, please feel free to comment. I’m all ears. Besides, I’m just a regular mom here and NOT trying to be expert on food or nutritionist. LOL. I’ll be glad to learn new things!