Organic Baby Food

Why choose organic baby food?

The market for baby products can be overwhelming. Reams of colourful packaging, confusing nutritional claims and conflicting advice can make it difficult to know if you’re making the right choices when it comes to baby food.

Opting for organic is one way to be sure that you can trust the food you’re buying for your children. Organic food has to be certified by law, so when you choose organic for your baby, you know that it has met a strict set of legal requirements.

Less Pesticides

Choosing organic is an easy way to reduce your baby's exposure to potentially harmful chemicals. In organic farming, the use of herbicides are completely banned and fungicides and insecticides are severely restricted. Organic farmers are permitted to use just 20 pesticides, all of which are based on naturally occurring substances, carefully selected and approved by the EU. 

Fewer Additives

There are similarly strict measures in place for organic food when it comes to additives. Most notably, hydrogenated fats, aspartame, and the food colouring tartrazine are all banned. When you buy organic baby food, you’ll usually recognise all of the ingredients on the packet, and the ingredients list will be much shorter.

No GM

Choosing organic baby food also means opting for food made without any genetically modified ingredients - GM crops are banned under Soil Association organic standards.

Organic Dairy

From 12 months onwards, your little one will be able to have whole cow’s milk. During the process of weaning, it’s worth knowing that organic dairy standards ban the routine use of antibiotics. Opting for organic products such as Yeo Valley's ‘Little Yeo’ yoghurts is one way to be sure that your baby’s switch to dairy is as smooth as possible.

Organic on a Budget

We understand that parenting can create pressures around both time and money – however if you’re looking to switch to organic, there are a number of ways to do so on a budget.

Find a Veg Box

With little ones around, leaving the house can sometimes seem like a big deal. If you’re trying to choose organic in this busy period of your life, opting for a veg box is one of the most effective ways to have healthy, nutritious food in the house delivered to your door. Veg boxes can be delivered weekly, and often have the option to include household products, eggs, meat and dairy too.

Make Your Own Meals

Buying raw ingredients is one of the cheapest ways to get more organic food in to your baby diet. Many own brand organic fruit & vegetables are certified by the Soil Association - Organic baby brand Organix especially recommend “pureed ripe bananas, cooked apples, pears, carrots, spinach, potatoes and peas.” 

Freezing ingredients is especially useful for using up veg - cooked cabbage and spinach both freeze well and can be added to other purees for extra iron.

Other veg can be frozen as purees or finger food size batons - pineapple and papaya freeze well too - even the hungriest babies can't manage a whole pineapple, so it’s a good way to avoid waste. Vats of cheese sauce can also come in useful as a base for pasta sauces (add your frozen spinach and you’re away). Adding a cube of cheese sauce can rescue dozens of meals from the bin.

Here are some of our super-simple, easy-to-freeze and nutritious recipes for little ones, with amounts easily adjustable depending on the quantity you’d like to make – all of which require relatively few ingredients to prepare.

Baby Food Recipes

Baby Daal

• Olive oil
• Butter
• Onion
• Garlic
• 2 Carrots
• Handful of red lentils
• 4 dried apricots (the dark organic ones rather than the bright orange ones)
• Garam masala

Heat butter and olive oil. Fry onions until soft. Add garlic. Grate in carrots. Add red lentils and water. Bring to boil then simmer. Add dried apricots and garam masala. Simmer until lentils are mushy. Mash or puree if necessary.

Tuna & beans

• Tin tomatoes or a good dollop of tomato puree
• Small tin tuna (in sunflower oil or water - not brine)
• Tin organic butter beans
• Butter

Heat then mash or whiz the whole lot together, or leave chunkier for an older baby or serve with pasta.

Sweet sweetcorn

• Small tin of sweetcorn
• Single cream or crème fraiche
• Cheese

Heat then whizz. For stage two try as a pasta sauce or serving on toast fingers. 

How we farm affects the quality of the food we eat. Choosing organic is one effective way to make sure that the food your child eats has been grown to the highest possible standards. What's more, with plant, insect and bird life 50% more abundant on organic farms - every purchase you make is a vote for the environment you want for your baby's future.

 

• Buy Organic

  Organic food is available nationwide in over 8,000 stores. Find your local independent retailer here.

  Find organic near me