Baby Food or Smoothies?

A common question for toddler parents: "When did you stop giving your child baby food?"

It's a rite of passage. Competitive parents are quick to point out how their child has been on solid foods and left "baby food" a long time ago, sometimes long before their child was even a toddler. "My kid is better than your kid" starts quite early!

But truth be told, we never stopped serving it. After all, what is the difference between baby food and an adult smoothie? 

"Baby food" is just an industry term referring to certain kinds of purees of simple foods with few additives that are recommended as first foods. 

But beyond that, purees are everywhere: Applesauce. Guacamole. Peanut butter. Tomato sauce. Pumpkin pie filling. Many soups. Some foods were purees at one point only to have been re-soldified: Chicken nuggets, bologna, cheese. Drinkable squeeze pouches of food are quite popular as a grab-and-go snack for kids. Adults enjoy smoothies as a health food. The stigma around "baby food" is a little silly when you weigh it against all that.

Smoothies have always been a great way to get our daughter to eat foods she might otherwise not eat. She has eaten dozens of avocados, for example, but never in their non-pureed form. I've included all sorts of things over time from hard boiled eggs to beef liver to veggies and fruits of all kinds. For the longest time, purees were the only way she'd eat any meat or eggs at all. 

Some parenting theories advise against hiding foods this way, as they suggest kids need to seek out the foods they instinctively want and build a relationship with them--they need to know what they are eating and how it feels in their body so they can adjust their choices going forward. That sounds well and good, but it also seems like semantics to me. All sorts of recipes have foods that we might not eat on their own but enjoy as part of a complex meal (onions, for example). I throw all sorts of things into a soup that I might not eat on their own. So I'm not buying it. Besides, there's not much that can truly be hidden from a toddler. That 1 drop of cod liver oil in a large drink will cause her to refuse the whole thing! You can only help it along so much. 

Another reason for the urgency to start kids on solid foods early is because the process of chewing and swallowing is important for health. But again, we're not exclusively serving foods in liquid form here. It's just a great addition to our diet.

Blended smoothies have changed in our house over time as tastes and nutritional needs have changed. Sometimes I think we are done serving them for good but then they come back into fashion.

Improvisation on a theme: Mango Lassi

Right now, what's popular is to make variations on the traditional Indian drink, the mango lassi. About half of it is whole milk, Greek yogurt and honey. The other half is a mixture of whatever raw or frozen fruit we feel like including. The traditional drink just uses mango but we've found that just about any fruit works. We use Greek yogurt because it's a staple at our house and it's just what we have available. It has a broad spectrum of live cultures compared to "regular" yogurt, and it's tartness adds a bite that works well for us, but it might be an adjustment for people who are used to other kinds of yogurt.

The whole family enjoys smoothies. It's a great snack that ticks a lot of nutritional boxes: The probiotics in the yogurt, the variety of different fruits and all the good stuff honey has. Our daughter enjoys a couple of these smoothies every week. I add seeds and nuts to mine, too. 

The only store bought purees our daughter will consistently eat are Mamma Chia squeeze pouches. Organic fruit, no sugar and lots of chia seeds! We are big fans of them. $1 apiece at Wal-Mart.