Making Good Baby Food At Home Is Quick, Easy

When Cheri Williams had her first baby 4 1/2 years ago, she fed him jars and jars of baby food, choosing from the appropriate age category on the supermarket shelves.

The second time around was different. Through her membership with La Leche, a group that encourages breast-feeding of infants, Williams learned that she could make baby food at home.

And so she did, after checking with her pediatrician. When her second child was about 6 1/2 months old, Williams began mashing portions of bananas to feed him. He graduated to bites of mashed, baked sweet potatoes, feasting in between on pears that were peeled, cored and put through a food mill.

He also ate ground string beans, ground baked potatoes and ground meats.

At 11 months, he’s a sturdy 25-pounder, looking to feed himself, and Williams is happy.

“I guess you just don’t think,” the Columbia, S.C., resident says of her first experience with motherhood. “I didn’t make baby food because I didn’t know you could do that.”

Indeed, misconceptions about difficulties of making homemade baby food send many parents to the baby food aisle by default.

But Karin Knight compares store-bought baby foods to TV dinners: Though there’s nothing wrong with them and they’ve come a long way in quality and variety, who wants to eat them all the time?

“There’s something special about food that’s homemade,” says Knight, who lives in Missoula.

She was 43 and a public health nurse in Los Angeles when she had her third child, a daughter. She hadn’t known much about nutrition when her first two boys were small, two decades ago. But she had, in her practice, seen many patients with diet-related illnesses.

She resolved to do things right. And when she couldn’t find a book to explain the nutrition and feeding needs of babies, she and her friend Jeannie Lumley decided to write one of their own.

“The Baby Cookbook: Tasty and Nutritious Meals for the Whole Family That Babies and Toddlers Will Also Love” was published in 1984 and updated in 1992.

In the book, Knight address nutrition, feeding and cooking for babies 6 months to 2 years old. She discusses milk, salt and sugar and health and food safety concerns, as well as providing a summary of what foods are appropriate for what ages.

“My daughter was my guinea pig, and she’s now 14,” Knight says. “She’s slim, but not anorexic. She has a nice body, and when she’s had enough to eat, she stops.

“What she eats is also very good. She eats lots of vegetables and lots of fruits and doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

It’s easier to teach good eating habits to infants, Michael Jacobson writes in “What Are We Feeding Our Kids?” (Workman). “It gets progressively harder as kids get older,” he says.

Then there’s the money. “It’s just as easy to squish a banana as it is to open a jar, and a lot cheaper,” says Suzanne Flanagan, another mom.

“When you’re feeding them two or three jars, three times a day, it can get expensive. And you mostly buy water, because (commercial baby foods are) processed with water.”

Besides, she says, making baby food is mostly mashing what’s being prepared for the rest of the family.

Feeding the baby foods from your regular menu also introduces the child to the tastes associated with the family, says Dr. Yvonne Bronner, a child nutrition health expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Bronner says, however, to reduce the typical additives - sugar, salts and fats - and to stick with grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, chicken, beef or pork, and dairy products (if the baby tolerates lactose).

And she says to practice good food safety habits, since infants’ immune systems develop slowly during the first two years of their lives. For example:

Don’t cut vegetables and fruits on the same cutting board used for meats, unless you’ve scrubbed the board thoroughly and vigorously with hot, soapy water and a sturdy scratchpad.

Disassemble and scrub the blender, food processor or food mill and its parts after every use.

Don’t feed your baby from the jar, then refrigerate the leftovers for another meal, since bacteria in his mouth can be transferred to the fertile fields of leftover food. Instead, place a small portion in a bowl, then add more, as needed, with a serving spoon - not the feeding spoon.