I too made homemade baby food for both of my children who are now 6 and 8. They eat yogurt, broccoli, asparagus -- healthy foods -- more often than their friends.

Don't get me wrong, they do like candy occasionally, but we never have a fight getting them to eat their vegetables. :)

Many people have asked how I did it and I wholly attribute it to the nutritious baby food that I took the time to make!

My daughter just turned two last week and as an infant, she only ate homemade baby food, and she still does. I cook veggies and oatmeal and such in bulk and freeze in small portions, then thaw two (one for lunch, one for dinner) overnight in fridge. She also eats a lot of what we eat, so her diet is never boring. We happen to eat extremely healthy so she eats nutritious foods all day. I also give her hemp seed and flax seed mixed with her oatmeal or yogurt. She is a bit small for her age (25th percentile) but she is very healthy, and SMART. Everyone I know gushes about how bright she is. She speaks very well and clear, she knows all of our primary colors, can count to 10, can sing several child songs (including the ABC song), and knows how to read 50+ words.

I know I sound a bit proud, and I am. She is my absolute pride and joy and I want to give her the best. I believe feeding your children wholesome, nutritious food is imperative for their future health and well-being.

Baby Guacamole with onions and cilantro? Give me a break. Norah O'Donnell should obviously stick to reading queue cards.

Baby Guacamole with onions, lime and cilantro? Give me a break. Norah O'Donnell obviously needs to stick to reading queue cards. I'm pretty sure that will make a baby sick. Her pontificating that this will somehow make a child smarter is absurd.

Absolutely true, I made all of my kid's baby food after reading the labels on the bottles and seeing the ingredients. I would cook whatever and then puree it and strain it into ice cube trays and freeze it. It would defrost in the baby food warmer. The first food my kids ate was yogurt--no cereal.

Excellent. I am glad someone is writing about this. People think I am nuts buying expensive organic, whole grain foods for my baby. I love this article because to me it is so very instinctual to think this way. Teach a child how to eat healthy, then eat healthy with your child and guess what you get? A healthy child. It is really pretty simple if you ask me.

speaking of major brands; beware of genetically modified foods as they are known to be dangerous particularly to infants and children. but of course you have to read other things besides general media to convince yourself.

Why is there no mention in this article of baby's FIRST and MOST IMPORTANT FOOD? Breast milk, of course.

It is not at all unusual to see a child devouring broccoli as if it is chocolate (that you even put it that way is interesting). More to the point, my experience with 3 kids, both genders, is that my girls ate differently from my son. They tended more toward fruits where he went straight for meat. And offering only certain things is a mistake - a wide variety of foods is best, and let the child choose based on what their body is asking for - different for different kids. At this age, they is no bias and they are listening to their bodies with no interference from advertising, modern life, etc. Trust them. And please offer candy and other sweets - kids who are forbidden from them will crave them like crazy in later years. My kids had pretty free access to candy - they liked it, but when the good food craving hit, which was most often, they were after the apples. Other kids were gorging on the forbidden stuff at every opportunity.

Just follow your instincts and let your child lead. Overthinking it leads to trouble. I don't have a lot of confidence in this article. Also, I believe strongly there are a dozen different paths to "healthy" eating. Our bodies are designed to function given all sorts of different foods, and can adapt. Perfection is not needed, and actually doesn't exist.

She is a bit small for her age (25th percentile) but she is very healthy, and SMART

I wouldn't worry about your daughter being "small" as the childhood charts have been revised several times. My son is at 15% (93 lbs at 13)compared with other children of his height (64") and age. Having SEEN other boys his height and age (I teach middle school), I'll gladly take my scrawny 15%er. My 12 year old daughter is at 82% for her age in height and 42% in weight for her age/height group. Both were breastfeed (he for 6 months, she for 9 months) and first foods were fresh fruits like soft bananas and peaches, and cooked ground rice cereal. Neither one is overweight, nor are they terribly picky eaters (it's all about texture for them).

I think there are too much information these days about what is suppose to be "best" for your baby. I feel like I need to second guess everything I do with my little ones and double checking everything online to make sure I'm doing the right thing at the right stage so I don't feel guilty that I might be short changing my kids or causing them irreversible harm in the future. Now I have to worry that if my kids grow to be short or overweight or a number of other things, it'll be my fault because I didn't force them to finish that broccoli for dinner last night.

 Nice story, Norah...........glad to read some good things for children's health.  So much of what seems to be proposed for children and their health turns out to be dastardly in the long run.

Thanks.............

When my son, who just had his 37th birthday, was around four, I took him and a friend with me to the grocery store. He asked if we could get some cauliflower, which was and still is his favorite food. His friend said, "EWWWWW!!!!" and he turned around with complete disbelief and said, "You don't like cauliflower? What' WRONG with you?"

Oh, and I only steamed it with a tiny bit of salt and vegetable margarine, no cheese LOL. It's the way he eats it to this day.

I too made my children homemade baby food. Steamed veggies and fruit, pureed and put into small snack size containers and frozen. I also made "cereals" for them to eat, brown rice cereal, lentils etc. My very favorite to feed them was avocado, we still love eating avocado as our favorite snack.. a 1/2 an avocado with lemon juice, a little salt and pepper and a spoon, yum! Yogurt everyday was really important to help them maintain the good bacteria in their bellies.

My children are now 3 & 7, last night we had our family movie night. Their favorite meal is our "snack" night that we do for movie night. This consists of a giant "fancy" tray with assorted fruits and veggies (last night was red grapes, slices of Granny Smith apple, baby carrots and sugar snap peas) with a homemade dip (dill & horseradish made with Greek yogurt). They chowed on the veggie/fruit tray while I cut up cheese, prepared a tray with smoked wild salmon and accompaniments, and got the other "snacks" ready. By the time I was done they had eaten every carrot on the plate and most of everything else. Their dad and I didn't get much! If you keep exposing them to good, tasty, healthy foods that is what they're going to choose to eat!

I find O'Donnel's initial paragraph's very interesting and her points worthy. However, her recipes for the age groups she describes are amiss. Babies ARE NOT to have EGGS, HONEY or MILK other than breastmilk or formula until one-year old. These are APA guidelines based on studies and research which apparently the author is not aware of. PLEASE consult with your doctor or research guidelines for introducing foods to babies and toddlers as waiting a bit on some foods can decrease lieklihood of allergies, obesity, etc.

A much less important side note: One does not need to be a chef (like your husband) to give a baby homemade baby food. Most of the time the making od the food simply involves mashing or boiling and mashing. DONE!

It's great to encourage this sort of nurturing. But don't forget about nature. A researcher once told me of that kids' taste buds are more sensitive to bitter flavors, and that's why they often don't like certain vegetables. We know that different people inherently have different numbers of taste buds.

From my own experience, I can tell you that I always gave my kids healthy foods, and they were at least 3 before they encountered sweets. The oldest (now adult) has always been very sensitive to flavor and texture, refused many foods even as an baby and to this day limits dietary choices. The middle one (also adult) will eat almost anything. The youngest (tween) ate most things until age 5, then started hating things like broccoli. Still, willing to try anything and is currently on an "I don't want any sugar" kick. All are/were in the top 10% of their classes, though the oldest definitely has had health issues.

I noticed some of these recipes required water. I made my own baby food for my son and used pumped breast milk. It’s all about constituency. Steam some fresh veggies from your local Farmer’s Market, puree them and add breast milk until the desired constituency is needed for your child’s age. Of course as they grow and develop teeth you will not need to puree the steamed veggies as much, begin chopping them into very small baby bite size pieces. The best part about doing this basic type of baby food making is that you can freeze it! You can prepare it, put it in ice cube trays over night and then pop them out in to freezer storage bags. Since these recipes have breast milk in them the same rules apply; they can only be frozen up to 6 month and warmed in bags under hot water. Do not microwave. This is was my opinion of the best. My son continued to get the nutrients of my breast milk at all meals and because I made the food I knew he was getting the best with no added anything. I continued to pump breast milk until he was 2 years old and snuck it in to his food any where I could. Breast milk is where the real nutrients are and it also introduces babies to a variety of flavors since it comes from what the mother eats. Weird example – My steamed, pureed carrot and breast milk recipe was a huge hit after I had eaten a very garlicky meal and used that breast milk. He couldn’t get enough of it!!!

Sure, it's a great idea to feed your babies fresh, homemade organic food. But please, spare us the judgment. I do not see you reference a single study indicating that this scientifically changes children's brains. Instead of promoting the trendy ideas lauded by those with wealth and time on their hands, I think an article with a little more practicality and a little less "do this or else" might be more effective. How about simply, love your baby and do the best you can with the resources you have. There is enough guilt in this consumerist society about childrearing.

Making your baby's baby food is a good idea. However, it is amazing how much is needed to make a bottle of food. i doubt that many mothers today have that much time.

ONe of the worse mistakes that a new mother makes is force feeding her baby. Why do we take such pride in how much thast one year old weighs? I emphasized to my mothers that they should follow the growth curve and that the fat baby was not as healthyas the thin one.

The realproblem begins at about age 2 when "my child won't eat" starts. Parents do not realize that the rapid growth stops and try to force the child to eat. This changes the pattern from eating on a hunger basis to an appetite basis and leads to a life long overeating pattern.

At what age is good to start juice? I don't give my 1 year old juice yet because it is bad for there teeth.

My baby's 11 months old and I've been making pretty much all of her food; it's less expensive than jars, you can control what goes in it, and doing it in batches for the freezer is a real time saver. I make maybe 1 or 2 batches a week and freeze them in mini muffin tins.

Nothing wrong with adding fresh herbs or onions; stronger flavors introduced early expand the palate so you don't get a 2 year old who shies away from "new" foods -because very little is new. I read that other cultures don't skimp on seasoning or strong flavors for their babies - Indian babies get curry; Asian babies get dried fish, etc. -and that made sense to me to do as well. I regularly add herbs from my garden to her food. Chicken roasted with garlic, onion and fresh thyme and then pureed is one of her favorites.

There was a comment that said:
"I don't know what America has done to its kids since I was a grade school child of the 1970s, but it's criminal - and I don't think pureed vegetables are going to help."

I totally agree with the first part of that, but maybe pureed veggies CAN help - organic ones anyway. Maybe the vastly expanded use of pesticides and GMO foods since we were kids is partly to blame? I really have no idea, but since I have a choice between giving my kid a sweet potato grown in a daily chemical bath or not, I choose not. Just in case :)

Why, if this society is supposedly so concerned about the long term health of its infants, are we still not encouraging breastfeeding? Most babies aren't breast fed beyond three months and I'm a bit concerned about what heavily processed, manmade formula actually does to a pancreas. We have sixty years of can feeding infants behind us and we see the results with a bunch of obese, selfish people proud of their bigness. Oh, I forgot, this society places the ability of parents to work for pay way above its children. Those of us who stay at home to parent our own children and breastfeed them naturally earn society's contempt because, obviously, we are inferior as we aren't working for pay.

That said, our toddler loves raw carrots and broccoli the best. Feeding our baby correctly has greatly improved our diets, too. Lucky for us, our baby didn't like the pureed foods and we've been cutting up dinners and lunches and breakfasts into little pieces since Baby was six months old to augment a natural diet of human milk. It is so nice to not have to worry about what Baby physically eats because the rest of the nutritional needs are met by the best food there is for a human baby.

While I agree that babies benefit from having access to the healthiest foods available, (I too, make my own baby foods) I find it ridiculous that she is basing her ONE experience with ONE child. I feed my kids pretty healthy and my oldest daughter is EXTREMELY picky. My son, who just turned two, has been less picky, but definitely has an opinion on what he likes and doesn't like. So don't fool yourself thinking, "If I feed my kids veggies now, they are SURE to eat them like chocolate in the future!" Kids are kids-and a big chunk of those kids don't like veggies. Regardless of what they ate at 9 months old.

And one more thing-I'm getting a little tired of all these stories that make moms feel worse about their parenting abilities than they already do. We're each doing the best we can. If store bought baby food is the best you can do right now, don't beat yourself up about it. I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean a lifetime of stupidity, obesity and crime for your child if you do so.

There is nothing wrong with making your own baby food. My biggest problem is that the world "organic" keeps coming up. Organic foods are more expensive and they are no more healthy or nutritious than regular fruits and vegetables. Organic does not mean better. If you want to make your own food to control what your baby is getting, I think it's a good thing. But don't assume that paying extra for organic is going to give your baby a leg up.

Whats wrong with onions for a baby? My daughter sat on my folks kitchen table and ate jalepeno's with my Father when she was about 10 months old!

It's so important to not limit a baby's foods just because you don't like them. If you're not fond of something, make sure you give them an opportunity to try it!