Hello,

I am looking for info on what most mom's feed their babies in the early stages? Do you typically puree your own veggies/fruit/meat or is it more common to buy jarred baby food? If you buy the baby food, what are the recommended brands and is it expensive? We have Gerber in the US and I am wondering if it is available in Zurich?

Thanks for any info!

There is a brand called Gerber here, but I am not sure if the Swiss eat cheese fondue at that young age...

Gerber Baby Food is actually owned by Nestlé (of Switzerland) so that's the name you should look for here.

source: http://www.gerber.com/Public/NonUSResident.aspx

scroll to the bottom of that page for details.

It has been a few years (4 yrs) since I had to make/buy baby food but my experience is that there isn't the choice that is available in the US. Also if I remember correctly it was hard to find jarred food that didn't contain preservatives and additives. I ended up making it myself most of the time. Maybe the selection has changed through the years

It's been a few years for me too. Breast-feeding was number one, puréed veggies (frozen in ice cube trays) I made quickly myself when I was cooking for the rest of the family (added salt and spices later for the rest of us) and when we got lazy or needed something for convenience/travelling we turned to the brands:

Hipp, Demeter organic baby foods from the health food stores (eg. Reformhaus Müller) or Coop's organic range.




My 3 are still thriving

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Hipp is pretty good; all organic and nasty-free. Also you could try Holle from Drogeries - expensive but supposed to be the bees knees of jarred baby food.

(My link above is directed to the UK version of this German company because I don't know what the OP's language skills are like).

From my memory, Nestle seemed to be the one with the added sugar and salt so I avoided that.

You could always make your own. Preparing a job lot of stuff takes a bit of time to do but it leaves you with a bundle of prepared meals for the freezer.

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Hello

I did all the purées myself the first couple of months and then slowly introduced 1 pot a week each of fruits and veggie to ensure baby was used to it and not be an issue when travelling.

For the ones I did myself I just did a couple of kg of veggies at weekends and froze them. The fruits I cooked for 4 weeks, then just mixed them up raw so I did them fresh.

The pots: I used Hipp and Nestlé as I wanted brands I could easily find everywhere. You must look at the etiquette and decide which pots to get. Some Nestlé have strange stuff addedd but so do some others... so I would just read and get the ones with as few ingredients as possible.

Milupa now has a new range sold at Migros which looks real good to me and Nestlé has the Naturnes line which is meant to be the closest to a home cooked meal Have not tried them though as my baby is not having pots any longer

One trick is also that as they get older, rather than buying the premixed pots with veggies and chicken, for example, buy the carrots and potato pot and mix it with the chicken pot. It will have less strange ingredients.

And bottom line, baby pots are heavily regulated in terms of what ingredients etc go into them so do not worry about it too much and go with what baby eats!

Ciao
K

We never bought prepared baby food. It is so easy to simply buy the best ingredients, steam or boil them, then puree them. Carrots, apples, beets, spinach, peas, bananas, pears, meat, the best cuts. No added ingredients, no salt, no preservatives. Pour into ice cube trays. Defrost on demand. So much cheaper and so much healthier than factory made (why do you think they sit on store shelves unrefridgerated?).

For us, common sense. Maybe that's an oxymoron.

well, different people have different needs and on top of that, baby food in pots offers much more options when travelling for example, or did you carry your frozen cubes with you and half defrosted them and refrosted them?

It gets to me when people make a choice and then try to imply IT IS THE BEST FULL STOP and all other are morons for not seeing their wisdom

And I do not even want to enter the debate of hygiene here and how baby pots are for sure more hyginiec than something prepared in our kitchen.

I am not for baby pots, but I am for free choice of a mother/father and it irks me when someone trys to imply there is only one way possible... luckily we are born in an age when we can choose and I was so happy and still am to have the choice!

And incidentally, in switzerland it is not reccommended to give peas to babies under 14 months....

K

So the conclusion is that yes, you can get jars of baby food and, as with many other topics linked to parenting, feeding is as hotly disputed/defended/critized as anywhere else in the world.

Sorry to be short, but what about letting people just do what they do?

Depending on how large your local shops are when you move here, you might find the range/variaty on offer rather small. If you live close to a German boarder it might be worth the trip out there, as I find they have a lot more choice. You might want to just buy 1 or 2 pots per 'menu' first and see if your baby likes them all, and then you can stock up. As an added bonus you can claim the VAT back from your shopping from Germany (milk, diapers etc are also much cheaper out there).
Note to Karl: I also made my own baby food for my first born, spending about half my weekend shopping, preparing, cooking, pureeing, and then freezing the stuff. With 2 children I peronally have other things to do with my time. I hope that when you so proudly claim that 'WE never bought prepared baby food', that you also helped with all this work!

Another option is to skip the puree thing altogther and go with baby-led weaning. I did the puree thing with my oldest son and then changed to babyled weaning for my twins. Have to say baby-led was so much easier and got them eating a wide variety of normal foods (no pureeing required!) much quicker.

There is loads of info available on the web, here is just one site:
http://babyledweaning.com/

It isn't some way out approach, highly recommend it.

Happy to answer questions if you are interested.

jo

Life changes and things evolve...
Naturnes is 100% natural ingredients, nothing added and environmentally friendly!

http://www.nestlebaby.com/ch-de/baby...il.htm?id=2296

Hope the fancy containers are BPA free, nothing beats glass pots in terms of safety. I also hope that they improved their flavor dept, the old pots tasted rather cardboard-y

Funily enough, one is able to get Nestle's stuff in much wider variety abroad than here.

We never really had a ready-made-pot eating child, anyways. I cooked my own, it was something ensuring our kid would actually eat, it tastes so much better than something made to last a couple of years on a shelf. I cooked every three weeks, three different meals (turkey, pork and chicken with a mix if different veggies and mushed all into pots, or made fruit pots) then froze all. Mushed bananas were great with quark, better than the petites fromages. This babyfood cooking dad always inspired me.

If we were caught out for a meal time, our child liked Holle Apple and Pear pot, Holle is very close to home made stuff. And then French Bledina for some reason was a success with out kiddo as well (their puddings too) and the French fruit pockets (the pocket one sucks out), I forgot their brand. It was only fruit, nothing else, but not sour (as opposed to the Coop kid brand).

Baby-led weaning is great, but as anything, it is not a universal thing that would work for everybody. Our kid was food disinterested until cca her 2nd bday, and the dexterosity a tot needs to feed herself would really frustrate her. I think it could be a choking problem too, with a combo of certain finger foods, a tot interested more in throwing it around (in her face) rather than eating and a lacking fine motoric skills

Sorry this is such a home made baby food campaign, I know the OP didn't ask for this. One thing, though, it gets expensive to merely live on the little pots. Cooking is fresher and way way cheaper, too.