My granddaughter is ten months old and she is eating the stage 3 baby foods, which are intended for babies who are crawling. Some stage 3 foods say they can be fed to babies who are nine plus months old.
Normally we purchase the Earth’s Best organic baby food, but the only store that sells the Earth’s Best stage 3 dinners is 25 miles away. We stock up on them by purchasing case lots, but we recently ran out of the dinners and it was not convenient to make the trip, so we purchased the Gerber brand, which is sold at our local supermarkets.
Last night I fed my granddaughter Gerber 3rd Foods Nature Select baby food, in the Turkey Rice & Vegetables flavor. The 3rd foods are the largest size of the types of baby food that comes in a jar. These contain 6 ounces and this size offers the ideal portion size for our ten month old.
Gerber 3rd Foods Nature Select Turkey Rice & Vegetables claims to be nutritious, all natural, minimally processed (except for the addition of Vitamin C), and contains ingredients “carefully selected to meet Gerber high quality standards”. There are no added salts, sugars, artificial colors or flavors. It contains tender pieces of food that are suitable for babies learning how to chew food.
As of this writing, the ingredients in our jar of Gerber 3rd Foods Nature Select Turkey Rice & Vegetables
is water, sweet potatoes, carrots, ground turkey, whole grain brown rice flour, apples, tomato puree (water, tomato paste), canola oil, onion powder, and ascorbic acid (vitamin C), to maintain color.
Although our baby really loved this flavor and ate the entire six ounces for dinner, it was difficult to feed to her because it was extremely soupy. I assumed since it contained turkey, rice and vegetables in larger pieces than found in the 1st and 2nd baby foods, that it would be thicker. It was so watery and runny that we actually had to add Earth’s Best baby oatmeal to it to thicken it up.
I do prefer baby food that is made from organic ingredients, but in a pinch the Gerber Nature Select works okay, and it is about half the price of the organic foods.