Help Mom Solve The Dinner Dilemma: Prepared meals could be an inspired Mother's Day gift for a busy mom

REDMOND, WA - April 18, 2007 Deliciously pre-prepared dinners or baby food delivered to her door could be an inspired, Mother's Day present for your favorite, busy mom, according to "mompreurs" Kay Conley and Mischelle Davis.

"When you're the busy mother of an active family, flowers or chocolates may not be the most meaningful gift that you could receive," says Conley. "A real gift might be getting out of the kitchen as fast as possible while still feeling good about what the family is eating. With meal services like Month of Meals or Sprouts Baby Food, you can 'cater' to your family's nutrition needs without spending hours planning and preparing meals every week."

Conley is the founder of Month of Meals (MOM) a home meal replacement company that offers customers packaged, restaurant quality meals that they can conveniently reheat and enjoy at home. It is almost like having a personal chef. No planning, slicing, dicing, cooking, or messy cleanup, Month of Meals chefs and staff do all the hard work.

Last year Davis launched Sprouts Baby Food, an organic baby food service that delivers freshly made food for infants and toddlers to homes within the metro Seattle area. Sprouts offers nutritious menu plans created with organic, all-natural ingredients to provide parents with a convenient alternative to the processed baby food on the market today.

"We both want to develop smart, healthy meal solutions for busy families that are struggling to have a 'family dinner' together," says Davis. "The family dinner tradition can help develop closer family relationships and healthy eating habits. Statistics show that children who regularly dine with their family are healthier, happier, and better students, which is why this custom is so important."

These two local mothers have more in common that just the commercial kitchen space that they share in Redmond. Both are mothers of young children and understand that balancing the responsibilities of running a business and managing an active family can be a real juggling act.

The National Retail Federation's 2007 Mother's Day Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, conducted by BIGresearch, predicts that consumers will spend an average of $139.14 on Mother's Day gifts compared to $122.16 last year.

Both Month Of Meals and Sprouts Baby Food offer gift certificates.


About Month Of Meals
Conley and her staff have provided great tasting healthy meals to their customers since 1999. Conveniently packaged in single or multiple servings, the rotating monthly menu has choices that appeal to a broad range of palates. All-natural meats are the base to their chef prepared meals that are convenient to serve at home for dinner or take to the office for lunch. They are perfect for the busy family, couple or single who want a made-from-scratch meal ready in minutes.

www.MonthOfMeals.com

About Sprouts Baby Food
Founded in 2006, the mission of Sprouts is to provide parents with the most nutritious food for their babies and toddlers through ecologically and socially sustainable practices and to offer educational opportunities that will help parents pursue the best health decisions for their families. All products are gluten-free and made with local, organic produce.

www.SproutsBabyFood.com

Nestle To Buy Gerber Company For $5.5 Billion

The big business of baby food is about to get even bigger.  Talk about obesity………..

 

Nestle SA, the world's largest food company, will purchase baby-food company Gerber for $5.5 billion in a cash-only transaction.

As a result of the deal, Zurich-based Nestle will become the world's largest baby-food manufacturer. Nestle's nutrition division, of which Gerber will become a part, includes infant formula and baby food. With the addition of Gerber, the division is expected to see annual sales of about $8.2 billion, CNN reports.

Novartis SA, the world's fourth-largest pharmaceuticals company, currently owns Gerber. Nestle also recently purchased Novartis's medical nutrition business for $2.5 billion.

Nestle has been trying to buy Gerber for more than a decade.  The purchase will be complete by the second half of 2007.

 

Keep Your Baby's Food Safe

When preparing food, parents are often careful to ensure that the foods they choose are healthy and appropriate for our babies. But many of overlook the suitability of the pots we're cooking in or using to serve their baby’s food.  Many do not know that cookware made from certain materials may not be ideal for the preparation of baby food.

• Plastic bowls can off-gas toxins into hot foods or when used in a microwave oven. 
• Unlined or uninsulated copper pots can destroy both vitamins C and E and the folic acid in the food. And acidic foods cooked in copper pots can contain toxic levels of copper.
• Acidic foods cooked in aluminum pots can dissolve very small quantities of aluminum, which can then be absorbed into the food.
• Stainless steel cookware is made up of a mixture of different metals. It is generally considered to be very safe.
• Avoid cooking non-stick pans because the coating may chip off and end up in the food. It is also believed that toxic fumes can be released by heating a non-stick pan to a very high temperature.

No one knows exactly how hazardous these types of cookware can be.  The existing research is inconclusive. Some experts think that the risk is very low, or that only people who are sensitive to certain materials will react unfavorably.  But what would be considered a small risk to an adult may be significant to a baby.  It is probably a good idea to look into safer cookware alternatives.

Welcome To The Sprouts Baby Food Blog

At the request of our customers we are creating a baby food blog. Come back and visit often to comment on baby food industry news, infant feeding ideas, nutrition, and more.