Recently I visited the baby food aisle looking for "just prunes" to try a new catsup recipe. It's been quite a while since I've paid much attention to this aisle. My "baby" is ten, and she never ate jarred baby food, so I haven't shopped on this aisle for quite a while.
The first thing that appalled me was that the store still stocks "Nursery Water" on this aisle. In 2007, the CDC said that baby formula should not be made with fluoridated water. So why is this water still marketed to parents of babies?
The second thing I noticed is the lack of organic baby food. Most of the food available was not organic. (And I wondered how much of it was genetically modified?)
The third thing I noticed was the lack of variety.
My two kids were born 19 months apart, but my first got jarred baby food and my second got homemade baby food. I don't think it's a coincidence that my second child has a much better diet now than my first. My first child got cereal for his first food, and now he is a carb addict. My second child got avocado for her first food, and she also loved plain yogurt. I cringe when I think about what I fed my son. But I simply didn't know any better at the time. Now I cringe to imagine how parents are still feeding their babies...nothing has changed on those shelves and that is just sad.
I've imagined putting together flyers to leave on the baby aisle so parents know there are options and why these options are better than picking up those jars. If parents realized it was as easy as mashing up some avocado and feeding it to their baby, I bet they would jump on it. Same thing with banana.
I think I'm going to do something about that water. And maybe come up with a project for my kids to work on with me on educating parents about baby food. But hey, while I'm working on that, share this page with your friends with babies and remind them there is another way!
