Meet my grandson, Hudson Scott Bacaj, who is six months old and just started eating solid foods. This means that my daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Eric have to decide what to feed him–the baby food in jars from Gerber and Beech-Nut that have been around forever, it seems, the newer and hipper lines of organic baby food, which comes in pouches, from companies like Plum Organic, or do-it-yourself baby food that she makes at home.
As it happens, and perhaps not by coincidence, this is a question that has been explored lately in the pages of Guardian Sustainable Business US, where I am editor-at-large. This week, I profiled Plum, a B Corps which is nested inside the publicly-traded Campbell Soup Co. Here’s how my story begins:
Plum Organics, the leading brand of organic baby food and a unit of the Campbell Soup Company, has an impressive story to tell. As a certified B Corporation, Plum meets high standards for environmental and social performance. Its products are organic, its innovative packaging is lightweight (albeit not recyclable), its lowest-paid workers earn 50% above a so-called “living wage” and it gave away more than 1m pouches of food to needy children last year.
“Our mission is to get the very best food to kids,” says Neil Grimmer,Plum’s president and co-founder. “I have a goal of being in every lunchbox and high chair in America.” And more: Plum this fall plans to introduce its first product for adults, a collection of five-ounce snack pouches of blended fruits and vegetables branded as Plum VIDA. Sample flavors: cherry, berry, beet, and ginger.
So what’s not to like? To begin with, all that social and environmental goodness doesn’t come cheap. Plum’s products cost more than mainstream brands like Gerber, the No 1 seller of baby food. Then there’s the question of whether processed baby food is needed at all….Finally, Plum’s breakthrough innovation was the spouted pouch, which is convenient, but it enables babies to engage on-the-go eating, for better or worse.
You can read the rest here.
Meantime, just last month, my friend and Guardian contributor Erik Assadourian, who is a new father, assailed the baby-food industry in a column arguing that there’s no need to buy baby food at all. His column, Making our own baby food, begins like this:
Here’s the thing: the majority of Americans are fat. So much so that most people don’t even consider themselves fat, probably because everyone around them is also fat. Lots of kids are fat too – a trend I’ve really started to notice since becoming a father two years ago. Toddlers and babies are so fat that sometimes I worry that my own son, Ayhan, looks malnourished.
But my son isn’t malnourished. In fact he’s strong and lean, and acts like one of the healthy monkeys in the ongoing Wisconsin National Primate Research Center caloric restriction study: perky, energetic, and excited about eating proffered bits of fruit. So when I step back and get a bit of perspective, I’m not worried.
I’m more concerned about how children are being set upon an unhealthy dietary path that starts not just when they’re born, but when they’re conceived. Recent studies find that what mothers eat while pregnant shapes children’s palates in vitro. So if mama is regularly indulging in ice cream and salty snacks, baby may be predisposed to crave those too.
Then when they’re born, too many children are raised on baby formula, which is far less healthy than breast milk (a topic I already discussed, to much maternal anger). At around six months, when starting on solids, many parents lead their children down another wrong path – that of powdered cereals, premade baby foods, and junk foods disguised as baby-friendly snacks. No wonder childhood obesity is at 17.3% in the US.
One recommendation: make your own baby food.
Eric’s right that a lot of the foods given to American kids is unhealthy. His indictment is too sweeping, though. Plum and Beech-Nut offer early-stage baby food that consists of nothing more than apples, peas or sweet potatoes. Which, of course, raises the question: Why not make it yourself?
For now, that’s what Rebecca, who is a stay at home mom, and Eric have decided to do. It will take more time and effort that buying baby food at the store or online, but it will save them money and give Hudson a good start on what we hope will be a lifetime of healthy eating. Yams and carrots, so far. Next up? Avocados.