Parent’s Choice Organic Baby Food Purees

For feeding hungry little ones fast—especially when you're on-the-go—you can’t beat the convenience of organic fruit and veggie purees in a pouch. If you're looking for a budget-friendly organic baby food, Parent’s Choice Organic Baby Food Purees are a great pick. With more than 20 flavours, ranging from single-fruit offerings to more advanced combos of veggies, fruits and grains, and a nice consistency and smooth texture, they're ideal for baby's introduction to solid foods.

QUALITY OF INGREDIENTS

We worked with registered dietician Cara Rosenbloom to assess the ingredients in the purees we tested. All Parent's Choice Organic Baby Food Purees are made without added salt, sugar or fat—things you shouldn't find in baby foods. Some of the purees contain ascorbic acid, which might sound suspect since it's not a whole food ingredient, but it's simply vitamin C, and Rosenbloom isn’t concerned about it being in baby foods.

The only hiccup in overall quality of ingredients is the presence of citric acid, a preservative, in some of the Parent's Choice purees. Rosenbloom says citric acid is an unnecessary ingredient (in fact, many organic baby foods are made without it). If you want to avoid this preservative but still take advantage of the budget-friendly price point of these purees (they're cheaper than organic purees from other brands), you'll have to do some label reading when you're shopping.

What did our parent testers think of the ingredients in the purees they sampled with their babies? All but one said they feel good about feeding Parent's Choice Organic Baby Food Purees to their little ones based on the ingredients, and they're happy with the ingredients used.

TASTE AND TEXTURE

While adults typically find the smell, flavour and texture of a lot of baby foods rather unappealing, our Today’s Parent Approved editors found these purees quite tasty and appealing. The Apple, Mango, Sweet Potato & Millet puree is a smooth puree that has a strong, sweet mango flavour with a touch of apple and a hint of the sweet potato's earthiness. The Pear & Pea combo (which does contain citric acid) also stands out for its smoothness and subtle pea flavour—a welcome departure from peas being the dominant, often unpleasant flavour in a lot of other baby foods. All the babies who tried the Parent's Choice purees happily gobbled them up—a big win.

PORTABILITY AND EASE OF USE

Parent's Choice Organic Baby Food Purees come in a 128-mL pouch with a resealable twist-off cap. The cap comes off with a click, letting you know the contents are fresh. All of our parent testers found it easy to dispense these purees onto a spoon for feeding, without any messy dribbles running down the outside of the pouch.

You'll want to give the pouch a good shake before feeding baby. In our lab tests, we found that the first bit of food that comes out of puree pouches is often a bit thicker and darker in colour than the rest of the puree. There’s nothing wrong with it—it’s just natural oxidization at work—but if it worries you, you can always discard it.

The flat, compact package is easy to store and carry around. While the cap goes back on tightly without leaking, unless you can refrigerate the leftovers, they must be thrown away—a drawback while travelling. It's also worth noting that the pouches aren’t recyclable, though the caps are.

VALUE

Once you’ve opened a Parent's Choice puree, it should be refrigerated right after a feeding and used up within 24 hours—a pretty narrow timeframe, but standard for purees sold in pouches. One of our parent testers wasn't able to use up the baby food within 24 hours, but nevertheless, all of our testers said they would purchase this baby food. On top of the great taste and organic ingredients, they feel the price point makes this a standout product.

FINAL WORD

Purees that come in a resealable pouch are super convenient, and the price point of the Parent’s Choice Organic Baby Food Purees can't be beat. Our editors were impressed with the flavours and textures of these budget-friendly organic purees, though we wish citric acid wasn't in some of them. Our parent testers were pretty impressed too, giving the Parent's Choice purees good or very good ratings for quality, ease of use and value for money. And parents told us that the toughest critics of all—their babies—really enjoyed nearly all of the purees they tried. A solid endorsement if there ever was one.