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Bringing Taste Back to the Highchair
Annabel Karmel on Homemade Baby Food
By Laura Cone
Annabel Karmel's son, Nicholas, was a picky eater as a baby. And Karmel did not blame him. Most of the baby food from jars, she says, tastes bland and downright awful.
"They have a very nasty taste, almost medicinal," says Karmel, who is considered an international expert on baby food. "If you look at a jar of baby food, it expires two years after the date of purchase. In order for it to last that long on the shelf, they have to heat it at a very high degree to sterilize it. That knocks out a lot of the nutrients and a lot of the taste."
Karmel, who lives in London with her son who is now 17 and two daughters, ages 14 and 16, was particularly sensitive about finding food her son would eat because she had lost her first child, Natasha, when she was 13 weeks. Because she could not find healthful, delicious jarred baby food, she learned how to make it herself using fresh or frozen fruits, root vegetables and meats.
"I have written 14 books and I started because my daughter died when she was very young," Karmel says. 
"Then I had Nicholas luckily. He was a really bad eater. I wanted to find a way to get him to eat especially because I lost a child; I felt very vulnerable." Her latest book is Top 100 Baby Purees (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
"One of the reasons why children become very picky eaters is because if they are brought up on foods like this and then you try to get them on real food – family food – they have never really had real food so they don't know what it tastes like, so therefore they are picky and difficult," Karmel says. "Whereas if you start with real food, then the transition to family food is much easier and you don't have that problem. So it's very important to start right when you feed your baby."
