A New Review

Boy, a lot has changed in the six years since my last baby.

New gadgets, new toys, and new safety features that make you feel like you must've cheated death by putting your kid in that car seat, highchair or bouncy thingamajig you painstakingly picked out ten years ago.

One of the most striking changes is the expanded selection of baby food available. For one, it doesn't always come in jars. There are square, stackable plastic tubs and even astronaut-style squeeze tubes. There are even whole shelves of organic foods and whole-grain cereals.

And the menu choices! Baby no longer has to suffer through jar after jar of strained carrots, sweet potatoes or peas. Or even the ominous 'chicken dinner' variety meals.

Oh, no. Today's modern baby has the choice of exotic fruits (kiwi mango, anyone) and entrees for even the most discriminating palates (beefy macaroni dinner - yum!). Still, there are options that seem less than desirable (corn casserole, seriously?).

So Sweet Pea and I have decided to help you navigate the baby food aisle. Together, we'll taste-test today's baby food options to let you know the real deal.

Yes, I also will taste this stuff. Oh, c'mon! You can't feed your baby something you're not willing to try yourself.

So, without further delay, here's our first critique:

Cinnamon Raisin Granola from Beech Nut's Good Morning series

Ingredients: apples, water, raisins, rolled oats, barley flakes, oat fiber, ground cinnamon, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), ferrous sulfate, citric acid, zinc sulfate, dicalcium phosphate...and a whole bunch of other ingredients I can't pronounce, don't have the patience to copy, and kind of make me nervous.

My take: It was surprisingly cinnamony (I know, not a word) for baby food. The cinnamon was subtle, but definitely noticeable. Any raisin flavor was undetectable.

Sweet Pea's take: She liked it, obviously.

The verdict: 4 bottles (out of 5). I'm the one who kept this one from getting a full five bottles. I'm not particularly neurotic about eating pure, organic foods, but this was the longest list of additives I've ever seen on a baby food label, which kind of freaked me out.









Attention Gerber, Beech Nut, Roundy's and other baby food manufacturers: If you're out there monitoring the mommy blogs (which you'd better be), send me your stuff and we'll test it out. Drop me a line at just(dot)jess@msn(dot)com.

2 comments:

Megan said...

That's the cutest flippin' picture ever! Based on her winning smile, I think she'd vote that jar a 5/5.

Jess said...

The 4-bottle rating was a combined score. I gave it a 3 because of the sketchy ingredients and she gave it a 5 on taste alone.

Stay tuned for sweet corn casserole...