Is Lady Gaga To Blame For Bare Baby Food Shelves?

It seems that every few days a celebrity gossip site will claim, sans any evidence if we’re going to be honest about these things, that another celeb is on the baby food diet. Lady Gaga is the latest victim. I first became aware of this trend from the Daily Mail piece headlined “Hollywood fad sends baby food sales booming thanks to diet ‘favoured by Cheryl Cole and Jen An‘.” I have literally no idea who Cheryl Cole is but I do know a Jennifer Aniston reference when I see one.

So what the heck is this diet? A nutrition web site reports:

The baby food diet centers on the idea of incorporating small jars of baby food into the daily diet as a way to control calorie intake. Some baby food dieters eat a few jars of baby food each day as low-calorie snacks, and others use baby food to replace one or two meals per day.

Judging from the baby food diet advocates out there, some mistakenly believe that baby food is always free from artificial food additives and pesticides (so not true). They are generally low in fat and they’re super convenient to tote around — but it seems like an expensive and particularly wasteful way to diet, no?

So I doubt that Cheryl Cole — please not Cheryl Cole! — is using this diet but I think it is a trend. And you know why I think it’s a trend? Because whenever I go to get baby food, the shelves are cleared out. It’s ridiculous. I make my own children’s food but I like to use prepared stuff for the on-the-go trips. We’re pretty basic — a jar of sweet potatoes here, some banana puree there — but these things are in much less supply than when I first started doing this. The horribly sourced Daily Mail site says that baby food sales for one company are dramatically up this year over last.