Natural Family News

HOMEMADE BABY LAUNCHES WITH LINE OF FRESHLY PREPARED, ORGANIC, KOSHER FOODS FOR DISCERNING PARENTS OF INFANTS AND TODDLERS

Unique Meal Integrity System Tracks Each Ingredient “From Field To Fingers”
To Ensure Purity And Safety Of Each Serving

Delicious Dishes Available Exclusively Through Homemadebaby.Com Retail Website For Greater Convenience, Freshness And Quality Control

Los Angeles – October 24, 2005 – Homemade Baby, a new company focused on health and nutrition for babies and toddlers, today announced the company’s launch and the debut of its initial product line of freshly prepared, organic, kosher baby foods. Using only seasonal, 100% organic ingredients, Homemade Baby creates delicious dishes for children aged 6 to 24 months. Each dish is individually prepared, slowly kettle-cooked and pureed under a Chef’s supervision and delivered fresh to a parent’s home the next day. The announcement was made by Homemade Baby founders Theresa Edy Kiene and Matt Kiene.

“Research suggests that life-long eating habits are established during a child’s first three years,” said Theresa Edy Kiene, who co-founded the company with her husband, Matt Kiene, after the homemade foods she prepared for their three children were a hit with family and friends. “By creating great-tasting, nutritious and natural foods for babies and toddlers, Homemade Baby helps parents give their children a head start toward making smart food choices for life.”

Although Homemade Baby will launch with six varieties of vegetarian baby food, the product line will expand over the next year to offer new choices as well as seasonal specialties. Homemade Baby dishes are available in three distinct textures – So Smooth, Good Mushy, and Kinda Chunky. The first stage, So Smooth, features smoothly blended, single-ingredient foods for the beginning eater such as Just Apples, Just Pears, Just Peas and Just Squash. The Good Mushy stage is for babies who are ready for a more adventurous texture and taste, and includes varieties such as Piwi (pears and kiwi) and Squapples (roasted squash & apples). The Kinda Chunky stage is created for older babies and toddlers who need to exercise their developing chewing muscles and includes recipes such as Baby Tex Mex (corn, kidney beans, peas, carrots and brown rice) and Yummy Yammys (sweet potato & lentils).

Homemade Baby maintains strict, comprehensive records during the production of its foods, according to its Meal Integrity System. Through the Meal Integrity System, the company can trace each ingredient inside each serving all the way back to the specific fields in which those ingredients were grown – literally, “from field to fingers.” All ingredients for every Homemade Baby dish are certified organic (by Oregon Tilth) and kosher (by Kosher Overseers of America: KOAOA). Homemade Baby purchases its ingredients from only the most reputable vendors, whose suppliers comply with the Fair Trade Laws, and then accepts only ingredients that are certified organic, kosher and GMO free. Every meal is prepared and manufactured according to the HACCP program, the strictest safety system implemented by the FDA. In addition, a portion of every batch of food that Homemade Baby manufactures is submitted to a professional laboratory for microbial analysis to certify an absence of microbes before the entire batch is released for sale.

“Because of these high standards, health-conscious but busy parents who might wish they had the time to cook tasty, nutritious meals for their children can trust Homemade Baby to do the cooking for them,” said Matt Kiene.

Homemade Baby is sold exclusively over the Internet at www.homemadebaby.com in order to offer 24-hour shopping convenience to busy parents. The company will initially focus on the Southern California and Nevada regions. The dishes are kept fresh during shipping via a customized, biodegradable 10-degree gel pack inside unique high-tech insulation to provide a constant 35 to 40 degree refrigerated environment during delivery. All of Homemade Baby’s packaging is recyclable.

Homemade Baby has enlisted an all-star team of consultants to advise the company regarding food safety and nutrition, including internationally known microbiologist and food safety expert Melissa Calicchia, M.S.; nutritionist and USC School of Pharmacy faculty member Dr. Roger A. Clemens; veteran food technologist Dr. Kathleen Nelson Feicht; Cal Poly food science and nutrition professor, and renowned organic certification expert Dr. Joseph Montecalvo, Jr.; and certified nutrition specialist and national lecturer Debra K.W. Topham, MS, CNS.

The Homemade Baby kitchen is located in Culver City, California, and features a baby “tasting room” where parents are encouraged to bring their infants for a free sample of the latest Homemade Baby creations. Homemade Baby believes that all children deserve good nutrition, and plans to donate 15% of the food it prepares to charities serving undernourished children.

Media Contact:

Taffy Miller
mPRm Public Relations
323-933-3399
tmiller@mprm.com

This was really exciting news to me. The Green Guide, which is an excellent resource for healthy living tips, eco-friendly product advice and green home news is having an open house next week from October 24-October 30. ALL their online content is FREE to browse for any 24-hour stretch during that week. I really recommend checking it out, and if you like what you see, think about subscribing. Visit the Green Guide and check out their open house here.

The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (never knew there was such a thing) has released a statement which questions the AAP’s recent findings on SIDS. Instead of encouraging pacifier use, it encourages co-sleeping and breastfeeding. You can read more here.

A recent study shows that you would be better off walking along a freeway, breathing in exhaust fumes than sitting inside your air conditioned car. Bacteria, fungus, fumes from car seats, exhaust fumes– all of these can be found in your car. You can read more about this and what to do about it here.

This year’s listing of the most fuel-efficient vehicles is out. Topping the list are hybrids, of course. But even if you’re looking for a car and aren’t interested in hybrids, there are some choices available. You can read the list here.

I have a hard enough time remembering the names of my five children. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to rattle off the names of sixteen. But an Arkansas mom,Michelle Duggar, will be doing just that– and all their names start with J. You can read more about it here.

I shouldn’t have to choose whether to buy organic or imported produce but, apparently, I do. It seems that a lot of organic foods are now being grown overseas, in order to decrease costs. Funny, I haven’t noticed that my food bill is any less. Read more about it here.

New Zealand baby experts have a slightly different opinion than AAP doctors who recommended all babies use pacifiers (called dummies in the article) to prevent SIDS. They have concerns that the focus on pacifiers will distract from the more important guidelines: back sleeping and avoiding cigarette smoke. You can read more about it here.

A recently proposed Wisconsin law would fine anyone asking a breastfeeding mother to cover up $200. I think more states should look into this. What’s the good of having a law on the books allowing mothers to nurse in public if they’re still going to get harassed or run out of places? You can read more about the bill here.

The newest AAP recommendations for SIDS include placing the baby’s crib in the parents’ room and encouraging pacifier use. This is supposed to keep the baby from sleeping too deeply. I wonder if my child using *me* as a pacifier all night accomplishes the same thing. Of course, the AAP would never encourage me to sleep with my child in my bed. In fact, that’s a big no-no, but at least they’re now recommending sleeping in the same room. You can read more about the recommendation here.

So, last week the Dr. Phil Show tackled the subject of nursing in public. The woman who was against it insisted over and over again that “it’s just not attractive.” I was unaware I was making a fashion statement when I was feeding my child. Plenty has been said on many websites about the “attractive” issue. Some of the funnier ones can be read here. As a bonus, you get to see a funny comic when you go there. You can read an abbreviated transcript of the show on Dr. Phil’s website. While you’re there, you can vote in their survey about nursing in public. Unless you’re going to vote that I have to nurse in the bathroom. If that’s the case, please skip the voting.

New thinking when it comes to feeding baby may replace rice cereal with enchiladas. Apparently, the conventional wisdom that it’s best to feed our children rice cereal and avoid foods such as peanut butter may be more urban myth than actual science. Some new studies are shedding light on what first foods we should feed our children. You can read all about it here.