Super Baby Food [Paperback]

Ruth Yaron (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• ASIN: B001PB6SRM
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (781 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,094,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ruth Yaron is a married mother of three. When her twin boys were born premature, she decided to put her many of years of education with a MS and an MBA to good use. She created a system to feed her babies the very best - food with organic, nutritive value that would help them to grow Super Healthy! The result of her efforts is grown health boys now 25 AND the book, Super Baby Food now in its second edition with over 20 printings... It has become the quintessential baby and toddler feeding guide for hundreds of thousands of parents, including celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Kourtney Kardashian. Ruth continues her research and to share Super Baby Food tips with her audience through her blog, her Facebook page and Twitter! Watch this website for continuing changes including a new edition in the future plus new segments in e-book form.

And for more detail, here is a recent interview with Ruth Yaron, author of Super Baby Food:

Ruth, we know you wrote your best-selling book, Super Baby Food, after discovering how to feed your premature twin boys the very best baby food. Can you tell us why you decided to bypass the commercial baby food out there and learned to prepare your own baby food?

Sure, twenty-five years ago, when my twin sons were born 9½ weeks premature and very sick, I knew that the most important thing I could do for them (besides giving them my love) was to feed them the healthiest diet possible. It was the mid 80's and America was into "health foods." But as much as I read about health and nutrition, I found that there was no single complete book about how to feed a baby healthy food.

For many new moms, caring for a baby is overwhelming and the prospect of making their own baby food is daunting, how did you get started and eventually write a whole book on the subject?

I fed the twins a diet of homemade, mostly-organic, whole grain cereals, fruits, and home-cooked vegetables. When my third son was born, I again pulled out my mini-blend containers and ice cube trays. This time I was fortunate enough to be able to quit my teaching job at the local university and stay home with my baby. As I made my son's Super Porridge while watching Sesame Street, I thought about other moms feeding their babies over-priced, nutritionally-inferior, commercially-processed boxed rice cereal, and the idea for the Super Baby Food book was born. I had written books previously on unimportant subjects, like computers and statistics. Nothing ground-breaking like healthy baby food! I was so excited to be able to work at home on something that I love so much and that interests me so much.

Many celebrities from Cindy Crawford to Kourtney Kardashian have praised Super Baby Food as their "must-have," "New Mom" product regarding baby's first foods. Why do you think Super Baby Food resonates with so many new moms?

Every Mom wants to give her baby the very best she can. With Super Baby Food, all the groundwork is done and a mom can simply follow the instructions and recipes to do just that. In addition, I think there is a very real satisfaction for parents to prepare their baby's food from start to finish and to know exactly what is going into their baby's diet. This satisfaction
is catching!

A big part of the Super Baby Food Diet, as described in your book, is Super Porridge made from whole grains. Many Moms are intimidated by the thought of purchasing a "whole grain," let alone preparing one for her baby. Were you intimidated when you started?

As I said, I was motivated by the very real need to keep my twins healthy, so I guess I my sons' diet became my mission and I could not read enough about nutrition and health food. Back then I was an inexperienced cook and used dozens of natural foods cookbooks to learn my way around the kitchen. I was a fanatic. The motivation to keep my sons healthy overrode any intimidation I may have felt. The good news is, once you know where to find the food, and finding it is easier than ever, many organic whole grains can be found in the organic isle of your grocery store, you'll feel like you could never feed your baby any other way.

In your book there are many money-saving tips for baby food but also for cleaning products and fun stuff as well. Will implementing your tips take a lot of time?

Nope. All the ideas use simple household items that are easy to find. The "recipes" can be created in a few easy steps!

You've been helping new moms with your book, your website, your online baby store, your blog and your new iPhone App. Why do you feel so strongly about spreading the word about baby food to help moms?

At the mother-of-twins club meetings, I would listen to all the other moms--including those with full-term twins with good birth weights--talk about projectile vomit, diarrhea, high fevers, and often hospitalization for pneumonia. I listened in silence, thinking about how blessed I was to have healthy babies. As my pediatrician is my witness, my sons never got sick, NEVER! She told me that my twins were THE healthiest babies she had ever seen in all her years of practice, including those babies who were full-term singletons. The average baby gets sick 6-12 times per year just as the twins' father and I (according to our mothers) did when we were babies, so I don't think my sons have inherited a super immune system. I have not done a medical study to prove it, but I claim that it was the Super Baby Food Diet that made my sons so very healthy. Let some scientist prove me wrong!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1,135 of 1,220 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good reference, but some key inaccuracies January 3, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

As a family physician and new mother, I bought this book with interest. Overall, excellent principles of healthy baby diet, and excellent ways of preparing baby food at home. However, I was astounded by several key things. -Yaron recommends feeding a baby nuts - she doesn't give a specific time frame to start, but talks extensively about how to prepare and feed them to "baby." Nuts are HIGHLY allergenic, they are definitely not recommended before the first year and longer after that if a mother can help it. I have heard of a child suffering from anaphylactic shock from eating home made peanut butter at 8 months. -Yaron recommends preparing Spinach and Carrots at home, these two vegetables are not recommended for home preparation because of their high concentration of nitrates. Baby food companies screen these two vegetables so that only those from areas of the country with low nitrates can be served to baby. -Yaron makes comments such as, "the good old days" when you can buy tofu in a refrigerated bin where you can bag your own tofu...well this was ended for a specific reason, IT ISN"T SANITARY.

These glaring statements make this book one that I would not recommend for my patients. If you are aware of all the facts above and will double check some of her principles with other authorative text, then this is a good book on home preparing food in a wholesome, organic manner.

267 of 291 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Use with Caution June 3, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

There is a lot of great information in this book. However, there is also quite a bit of nutritional misinformation to go with it. So I found myself having to double-check any recommendation I didn't already know about with another source which somewhat defeats the purpose of buying the book. That said I'm a complete kitchen klutz so having a book that explains exactly how to shop for, prepare and freeze each food is very helpful.

I'd just be very, very careful about using the exact diet as recommended for a baby under 1 year without consulting with your pediatrician first. For example, in order to avoid the "evil" meat, the book recommends introducing nuts, seeds & soy into the baby's diet from a pretty early age. These foods are all high allergen foods and really are not any better for a small baby than some pureed chicken. The book also recommends liver powder -- but organ meats are high in toxins. It also recommends cottage cheese starting at 6 months but cottage cheese has all the same problems as cow's milk and should not be given until you are ready to start straight cow's milk.

So in some senses I think the "cure" (a diet full of allergy-causing foods) is worse than the "disease" (eating meat once in a while).

The book is also not very bfing friendly... if you push solids in the amounts recommended here and as early as recommended here, you could easily have supply problems or your baby could self-wean by 9-10 months.

87 of 92 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Here's how to tell if you'd like the book: June 6, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I am shocked at all of the poor reviews this book was given, and I hope they don't turn people away from a book that I really appreciated. When I first opened the book, I read instructions on how to prepare and store almost every fruit or vegetable you can imagine (what a great resource!), but also saw things like grinding your own millet for cereal, making your own yogurt, adding kelp for nutrients and I thought, boy am I in for a long read! But what I thought would be terribly complex wasn't complex at all. Her directions are very simple and easy, and I felt she always kept the idea of less time and less money is best. I was consistently surprised how easy it was to put my baby on a wonderfully healthy diet, and it gave me such a sense of pride to do this for my daughter.
Still wondering if it�s for you? This is for mothers who want to make their own food, but is also aware of the extreme importance of nutrition. Friends of mine who had and had not made their own baby food would gasp at the time and energy they thought I put into my baby's food, without realizing that it wasn't very time-consuming at all and was very rewarding. If these are your thoughts, stay away from this book. If you aren't willing to really read and learn about nutrition, stay away from this book. If you roll your eyes at "tree-huggers" and think organic farming is nonsense, you may not want to buy this book either because there is touch of this attitude. . She never sounded "preachy" to me, she just sounded well-educated, however I personally have strong views on human nutrition and how we treat our bodies AND communities by the food we consume.
Also: I�m pretty sure that the comments about the nuts and nitrates in carrots and spinach ARE mentioned in the book. I think some people read only some parts and were ready to ring the alarm bells. If you read further, there are warnings for issues such as those.
On a final note: After I bought mine, it came with me EVERYWHERE so I could read a few chapters whenever I got a chance. I bought it for a friend and I laughed because she was carrying it with her in the diaper bag. For those of us who loved the book, we know it's worthwhile. I recommend checking the book out from the library first, and then buying a copy if it seems like something you would really like.