Reducing Baby Food Waste

It’s recommended to give your baby a wide variety of foods when you start weaning so they experience all the different flavours and textures. Some may be liked more than others but with that variety can come waste as your baby is only eating such tiny amounts of each food and probably rejecting some too.

So many ingredients come as a large plant or in huge bags at the supermarket and quite a lot can get wasted even if you are making up meals for your baby in bulk and freezing. It can take some quite impressive planning to ensure that you use up all of your ingredients before they start to turn!

One novel way to avoid some of this waste is to share ingredients with friends who are also weaning or even share cooked food together? 

Puree Feeding

You could each cook a different puree at home, divide into portions and then share the portions between you.  Make it a weekly meet up where you all cook the day before or in the morning and then swap meals which could keep you going for the next few days or throw them in the freezer for the weeks ahead. Your baby will get a good variety of foods and maybe even try things that you might not have considered before.

You could agree menus in advance or go for pot luck!

Baby Led Weaning & Finger foods

If following Baby lead Weaning you can share foods by roasting up large batches of root vegetables or sharing foods that you would normally waste if it was just you and the baby eating it. If each person in a group tried a new BLW recipe you could all go away with a selection of new snack / meal ideas to recreate at home if successful. This doesn't just save waste but also time and your sanity.

Maybe it's even as basic as bringing along your leftover vegetables each time you meet and swapping for something else that you do need.

Grow your own?

Could you take this concept further and each grow a vegetable and share the crop?

You could do all this with your antenatal / NCT group friends who have similar aged babies or maybe friends that you’ve met through a baby class? 

I'd love to know if you do something like this already!