How to Make Your Own Baby Food

Many parents know that when they cook at home instead of eating pre-packaged foods, they create healthier, more nutritious meals for their families. Cooking your own meals lets you control exactly what you are eating, giving you the ability to manage your diet and ensure that you are maximizing important vitamins and nutrients while reducing fats, preservatives, and other unhealthy ingredients. Furthermore, cooking at home is less expensive than eating out.

However, many parents who are otherwise very careful with how they feed their family overlook baby food. Good nutrition is vitally important to the youngest members of our families, and pre-made baby food is far more expensive than it needs to be. Here are some tips on how to make your own baby food, to ensure that the youngest members of your family also receive the best nutrition possible.

1. Use the Freshest Fruits and Vegetables
Fresh fruits and vegetables have the most important vitamins and minerals in them, and they also have the least amount of nitrates. Nitrates are found in soil and in water, and can harm young children if too much is ingested. Nitrates build up over storage time, which means that fresher fruits and vegetables are safer. You might also want to consider buying organic foods for your baby, because organic farmers do not use fertilizers with nitrates in them.

2. Wash Food and Utensils Carefully
Babies have not had the time to build up resistances to food-borne germs and bacteria, making them particularly prone to stomach upset and digestive problems if food is not carefully treated. Make sure to wash your hands, your utensils, and your foods carefully before cooking.

3. Cook the Foods
Fruits, meats, and vegetables should be cooked to make them soft enough to blend properly. In order to keep the most amount of nutrients in your baby’s food as possible, steaming or baking your ingredients is better than boiling. Meats should be trimmed of fat and should have any skin removed before cooking.

4. Puree Until Smooth
Use a food processor, a food mill, or even a fork to puree your baby’s cooked foods. The younger the child, the more important it is that the food is absolutely smooth before feeding.

5. Add Liquid to Reach the Right Consistency
Baby foods for very young children should have a thin consistency, while older babies can have less watery foods. To reach the desired consistency, you can thin your cooked and pureed foods with breast milk or formula as well as with water. If you boiled the baby’s food to cook it, you can also use that water for your liquid, as it will have retained some of the vitamins that were in the food.

Preparing your own baby food is simple and cost effective. Remember that you don’t need to add sugar or other sweeteners to a baby’s food, the flavors of the fruits, meats, and vegetables stand on their own. Feel free to experiment with different flavor combinations to see what your child enjoys the most.