Buying Organic Baby Food Pouches Eases My Mom Guilt For Not Cooking For My Second Baby

My first child was awash in a sea of homemade baby food. I bought recipe books, special freezing trays, special baby food processors – I was really into it. My second child is going to be one is less than a month and I just realized I pureed exactly zero foods for her. Who needs to when you can get organic red lentils and quinoa in baby food pouches? I am the sucker who fell for the marketing. I admit, it eased my mom guilt over not making any of my own baby food this time around.

Once she got old enough to actually eat chunks of things I would roast some veggies in the oven and give her stuff like scrambled eggs. But the actual steaming, roasting, pureeing, cooling – yeah. I never did that this time. Did you know they put things like quinoa and kamut in baby food now? I didn’t even know what kamut was until I bought it for my child to eat in a Sprout food pouch. The very fact that had no idea what it was coupled with the word “organic” sold me. I’m a sucker.

I read an article this week about companies wooing moms back with superfoods. I hate realizing that someone’s devious marketing scheme worked on me. Okay, it’s not devious; it’s damn smart. Maybe I could find the time to cook all of this food myself, but why even bother when you have things like carrots, mango, coconut and red lentils in one easy little pouch? The convenience coupled with the fact that I could usually find them on sale at Publix for a dollar a pouch made it really easy for me to depend on them for the few months that my child was eating purees.

From Today Moms:

Natural supermarkets reported a 63 percent increase in organic baby food sales from 2011 to 2013, according to Mintel and SPINS research. It’s also predicted that, with the recovering economy and birthrates, more parents will be willing to buy baby food versus making their own””Mintel predicts baby food and snack sales to grow 30 percent from 2012 to 2017, to reach $2.2 billion.

I don’t feel as bad knowing it’s not just me. A 63 percent increase is insane. When something is relatively affordable, easy and organic – it’s hard to resist the convenience. I do have to admit that I’m thrilled she’s almost at the age where she can eat what we eat. I have enough mom pitfalls to feel guilty about.

(photo: Amazon)