Once your pediatrician gives you the green light to start solid baby food with your baby, parents usually have several questions.
Which foods are the best to start with?
How exactly do you start?
How should you prepare baby’s food and how much?
Are there any foods to stay away from?
Should it be organic baby food?
Is store bought baby food bad?
And more. All of these questions are good and common questions. With more parents working–from home or out of the home–parents are not only asking these questions, they are also looking for the healthiest, easiest, and most convenient food options for their baby that fulfill their nutritional needs. We totally get it. It’s not always quick and easy to make your own baby food. Some parents don’t have the time and some parents just don’t want to–and that’s okay. This is why when we discovered Little Spoon–a company that delivers fresh organic baby food and clean vitamins and natural remedies to your door–we had to check them out and tell you all about it.
What You Need to Know about Baby Food
Traditionally, it’s been suggested that rice cereal is the best first food to give your baby because it’s gentle on the stomach. This is actually considered one of the myths of starting solids. Fruits, veggies and even meats are completely safe solid foods to begin with and are actually preferred. Rice is found to have high levels of arsensic and has fallen out of favor as a daily solid for your baby. This is why it is important to me to always give clean, fresh, real foods to my baby and skip the cereal.
Heavy Metals
Many parents have turned to store bought baby food as a convenient choice, however, they often contain preservatives or are treated with extreme heat processing. Recent studies have also revealed dangerously high levels of heavy metals found in most shelf stabilized baby food. This has been a major topic amongst parents recently because even small amounts of heavy metals have a real impact on our babies’ developing brains and IQ. Scary!
So how are heavy metals finding their way into baby food? It happens in two ways: the sourcing of ingredients (naturally occurring in soil) and heavy machinery coated and cleaned with heavy metals and neurotoxic pollutants.
These findings have concerned us parents, and rightfully so! Our babies’ first bites are crucial. Many of us–myself included–are time-pressed and don’t have the ability to always cook fresh food at home. This is why turning to small-batch fresh baby food like Little Spoon’s Babyblends, is a great way to go. While testing, I learned that their food is fresh, never subjected to heavy and extensive processing, and includes a wide variety of meticulously sourced ingredients. This ensures a varied diet for our developing babies. 🙂
Little Spoon & What Makes Their Baby Food Different
Cool fact: Little Spoon is the only nationwide fresh baby food delivery service that delivers straight to your door!
Fresh & Organic
Unlike other baby food brands that use extreme heat processing or add preservatives to extend the shelf life of their products, Little Spoon uses only fresh, 100% USDA-Certified Organic & Non-GMO Project Verified ingredients. I love that! They only partner with trusted farms who follow rigorous testing. They also never use preservatives, additives or refined sugars–just fresh, organic fruits, veggies and superfoods. 🙂 To ensure their Babyblends stay fresh and nutritious, Little Spoon uses cold-pressure water technology (HPP). This eliminates any harmful bacteria without the use of extreme heat processing or preservatives.
Third-Party Lab Testing
What really impressed me is that Little Spoon performs third-party lab tests on every single batch of Babyblends to ensure safety and the highest quality. That’s huge.
Made Fresh Weekly, In Small Batches
Little Spoon’s food is made in small-batches, fresh and never treated with extreme heat and heavy processing. Metals commonly make their way into store-bought food as a result of lengthy processing and commercial sterilization with heavy machinery that’s coated with brass, bronze or plastic. I appreciate that they put a little more TLC when making their products. This gives our babies the safest and best quality foods for their first bites.
Researched Recipes
I also really like that Little Spoon has many different recipe combinations. You can see on their website what each Babyblend was designed to promote–brain health, bone health, immunity and more! It’s cool that each blend has been thoughtfully made and serves a nutritional purpose. Their Babyblends are rich in calcium, vitamin D, vitamin C and iron. These vitamins and nutrients help block absorption of heavy metals that can be found naturally in produce. They also avoid ingredients rich in inorganic heavy metals such as rice and soy, and instead use organic chia, quinoa, buckwheat and hemp.
Nutrition Council
Little Spoon has a Nutrition Council that is comprised of leading pediatricians, nutritionists and food experts. They work closely with their Nutrition Council to ensure they’re staying on top of the latest research and delivering the most nutritious meals. I love that! Their recipes have been designed with experts and the result are meals that provide our babies all their nutritional needs through each milestone of their development.
How Little Spoon Works
Once you visit their website and sign up, your first step is to tell Little Spoon about your baby. By gathering information like their birthday, what developmental milestones they’ve accomplished, if they’re just starting purees, or if your baby is an adventurous or picky eater, they then create your baby’s very own nutrition plan! I really like that they offer customized meal plans for every baby, but they also give you the option to customize and pick your own food if you have preferences. Their meal plans help optimize baby’s development by giving them the cleanest, most nutrient dense meals for their needs at every moment.
Once you have received your baby’s meal plan and have placed your order, your Babyblends will ship cold and ready to eat directly to your home! Just move it to your refrigerator for storage so that baby’s food stays fresh and delicious. (Good for 14 days starting from the day it arrives to your home.)
Baby’s First Bites
Did you know that 85% of your baby’s brain is formed in the first 1,000 days and that 65% of the nutrients go straight to your baby’s brain? Incredible, right? This is why it’s important for us to expose our babies to a wide range of healthy ingredients. This not only expands our babies’ palates but also ensures they are getting a balanced diet during this most formative time of brain and physical development. As a busy mom, I love that Little Spoon has taken the guesswork and labor out of this for me. They make sure each of their organic baby food blends combines specific nutrients to give my baby the best and what’s needed for healthy development.
Clean Vitamins & Remedies
Something else that Little Spoon offers are their Boosters, clean vitamins, probiotics and natural remedies designed for our babies. Their all-natural, powerful Boosters are designed to tackle some of baby’s biggest health needs with nutrient-rich, perfectly portioned powders of vitamins and probiotics.
For iron fortification, their Wiz Kid supplement is a safe alternative to iron-fortified cereals that can have high levels of heavy metals. Sniffle Shield not only protects your baby during cold and flu season, it can help increase vitamin C stores to keep the lead out. Gut Feeling is packed with 3 Billion CFU’s of their clinically researched probiotic to help build a healthier, more resilient gut. And say bye-bye to constipation with their Poopie Powder! This Booster is designed with probiotics, prebiotics and organic prune powder to get things moving for your blocked up baby. All of their Boosters are easy to mix into Babyblends, baby formula or your liquid of choice. I know that I’ll be mixing these in with my kid’s food!
Moms & Babies Love Them
There are lots of options for organic, healthy baby food, but we have yet to find another company that creates custom meal plans for babies, delivers fresh, high quality food straight to your door, while also offering vitamins and supplements for babies like Little Spoon. Our babies have tested them and they have loved the different blends! We’ve never seen so many babies enjoy eating their vegetables. This makes for healthy babies and happy mommies. Little Spoon is definitely a service that we recommend to all families embarking the “starting solids” journey with their littles.
