Baby food: a healthy alternative

Up to six months of life, the best food for the baby is. From this age on, your digestive system is ready to accept and swallow foods other than milk.

When introducing new foods into the baby's diet, it is best to prepare them at home, controlling the quality of the raw materials, the cooking, the salt and the final texture. This implies work and dedication on the part of the parents.

On some occasions, the preparation of the porridge can be a problem due to lack of time, going away from home or being on vacation. In these cases, an occasional healthy and safe alternative to the baby's diet would be baby food or jars.

Advantages of baby food

• Convenience: preparing baby purees is easy, but sometimes time constraints can be a problem. In these cases, baby food is a good solution.
• Safety outside the home: if we go outside the home, the assurance that the cooked food is kept in optimal conditions outside the fridge can raise doubts, especially in summer, with high temperatures. In these cases, the use of fruit jars, for example, can be a safe solution to feed the baby.
• Variety: the baby food offer a balanced diet, with a variety of ingredients that complete the baby's diet, familiarizing him with the right foods for his age. In addition, each commercial house cooks them in a different way and with their own recipes that favor that the flavors are not always the same.
• Nutritional benefits: the recipes for the baby food should be prepared following the recommendations of pediatricians, so they should be nutritionally balanced.
• Very soft textures: they are made using special grinders that achieve fine and soft textures, adapted to the baby's digestive system at each stage of its development, and favoring the swallowing of food, especially in the first introductions of baby food.
• Without preservatives or colorants: they go through a sterilization and vacuum packaging process so that they are preserved naturally without the need for preservatives or colorants.

They're safe?

The regulations that are established for the preparation of baby food in terms of ingredients and labeling are very strict, which gives a guarantee of high quality and safety to baby food jars.

The quality controls are carried out in several stages of the manufacturing process. In addition, the European directives and the regional councils of our country have systematic and periodic control measures, which keep the chain in order until the baby food reaches the parents.

The mandatory indications on any packaged food, the baby food labels, must provide information on: nutritional composition, preparation instructions, presence or absence of gluten and minimum age from which they should be consumed (minimum: 4 months).

The microbiological state of this food must be impeccable: babies will consume them as is (fruit jars) or after a slight heating (chicken with rice).

The containers have hermetic closure: to open them, you have to press the center of the lid, highlighted in another color. If the lid moves, or if the lid does not "pop" when turned, the food will not be consumed.

Baby foods must not contain pesticide residues above 0.01 mg / kg of ready-to-eat or reconstituted product.

Organic baby food

There are commercial houses that make their baby food with ecological or organic ingredients; This means that they do not come from transgenic seeds, and that they have been grown with the least possible impact on the environment, avoiding at all costs the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

• An alternative… good, occasional and safe to feed the baby.
• For your peace of mind: they are manufactured following strict quality standards.
• They are very nutritious: made with varied and top quality ingredients.

Dra. Esther Martínez GarcíaPediatric Specialist