Macro Organic Beef with Vegetables & Rice | Chewsday Review

Today’s review is an organic baby food pouch made from organic vegetables, organic beef, organic rice, organic tomato paste and organic cornflour. If you could get organic water I suppose they would have used that too. You might be wondering why I’ve written organic so many times, but I’ve only written organic 9 times now, which is the same amount as is written on this little pouch. You tell me… is it excessive?

Ingredients

Water, Organic Vegetable Purees (24%) (Tomato, Carrot, Pumpkin, Pea, Onion, Sweet Potato, Zucchini, Spinach), Organic Beef (12%), Organic Tomato Paste (11%), Organic White Rice (3%), Organic Cornflour,
Water is the first ingredient in this pouch, but then they’ve also used cornflour to help thicken it up. Seems counterintuitive but cheap.
Contains no common allergens.
May contain: milk.

Positives

Negatives

This pouch is 12% beef, which might not seem like a lot but it’s more than most when compared to other pouches on the market. For example Heinz Beef & Vegetable Casserole is 10% beef and Rafferty’s Garden Beef, Sweet Potato & Parsnip is only 5% beef.
If the pouch is 12% beef, that means it contains 14.4g of beef which is approximately 0.4mg of iron. This is less than 4% of a 7-11 month old baby’s recommended daily intake.
You’re paying for mostly water. Woolworths non-organic Smiling Tums brand has more vegetables than water.
Fibre comes in at 1.9g per serve, which is just below recommendations but at least they’ve listed fibre in the nutrition information. Most baby food pouches don’t show the fibre as it isn’t a labelling requirement.
Neither the pouch nor the hard plastic cap can be recycled. This is the same for all baby food pouches, so if this is an important consideration for your family you can buy Heinz baby food in glass jars at major supermarkets.
This pouch, like many others, is very low in fat. Yes it technically meets nutrition guidelines, but it’s actually lower than it needs to be.

Marketing

“Organic”. I counted the word “organic” 9 times on this little pouch, but using it multiple times still doesn’t change the fact that organic doesn’t necessarily mean more nutritious.
“No added sugar.” True, but it contains several of the sweeter vegetables so will have a sweet taste despite having no added sugar.
“Source of protein.” This claim can be put on any product that has 12% of its energy coming from protein. Given the pouch is low in energy (aka kilojoules or calories) this isn’t hard to achieve. It’s not a very impressive claim, but most likely gets the attention of parents worrying about protein.

Alternatives

The baby food aisle can be tricky to navigate. This pouch, like others, has its place as a convenient option when you’re getting started with solids but it isn’t something I would recommend offering regularly. When possible homemade puree will give you more bang for your buck and you can adjust the texture to suit your baby’s skills.
The Smiling Tums Beef and Vegetable pouch is similar nutritionally, but is cheaper and contains less water.
Small batch purees (like Tiny Turtles and Le Puree Co) are another convenient option with more variability in flavour and texture.

The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.