The winner is orangefukurou! Congrats, I've emailed you!
09 June, 2010
26 May, 2010
Happy Baby Review & Giveaway CLOSED
HappyBaby products are all organic and 100% natural with no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no genetic modification, and no preservatives. All of their packaging is BPA free and phthalate-free, recyclable and earth-friendly! HappyBaby works with Project Peanut Butter, and every package purchased contributes to the effort.
The puffs, cereal and yogurt melts are available to me locally at Target, my grocery store, ToysRUs and my local organic market. To find the other items, I made my first trip to Whole Foods (2 1/2 hours round trip), but I still couldn't find the pouches!
I do wish the bags were recloseable.
The chicken bites and fish bites said to bake at 400 for 8 minutes; the mac + cheese take 15 minutes.
I popped all 3 in the oven and planned to take the chicken and fish out, and leave the mac + cheese in for another 7 minutes, but when I took them out, they were still frozen almost completely solid! After a total of nearly 20 minutes, they were heated through.
The HappyBites have "hidden" vegetables like chick peas, cauliflower, butternut squash and potato (varies based on the product.)
The mac + cheese was like baked shells and cheese in patty form.
My son absolutely inhaled the chicken bites; I couldn't break them into bite size pieces fast enough. They had a crispy exterior and a creamy interior the consistency of stiff mashed potatoes.
The salmon stix were my husband's favorite. I thought they smelled like crab cakes as they were baking, and he commented that with a firmer interior, they would taste like it too. He thought they were a little bland, but this is coming from "Mr. Hot Sauce." I thought they were mild tasting enough that kids would like them, but had enough flavor to exercise their little palates. I reminded him that he wasn't their target audience!
My 5-year old daughter was being a brat acting like a 5-year old and claimed not to like any of it. She was just angling to get dinner over with so she could go camping.
Prices seem to vary a bit depending on where you go. Where we live, the yogurt melts are $3.29-$3.69, puffs $2.79-$3.29, cereal around $3.79. The HappyBaby frozen were $4.69 and the HappyBites were $4.99-$5.99.
I haven't been able to find the pouches. Whole Foods is supposed to have the best selection of HappyBaby, but they only had other brands of pouch baby food. I could have sworn I saw them at ToysRUs, but they were another brand as well.
I'll continue to choose HappyBaby food for their "no junk" promise, tasty organic products, BPA free packaging and social responsibility. I'm hoping that more stores will carry their products so it will be easier to find!
Thank you to HappyFamily for providing the free product coupons for the review and giveaway. The freebies in no way affected my review.
20 April, 2010
Happy Baby Organic Finger Food for Babies
I've made baby food for both of my children, but commercial finger foods still come in very handy when kids are learning to self feed. Easy to pick up and melt in their mouths quickly, letting them get used to picking things up and "chewing."
Happy Baby Food wasn't available when my daughter was little (at least, not in my area!). I ended up redeeming points through the Stonyfield Farms rewards program for coupons.
The stores where I shop price the puffs between $3.19 and $3.29 and the yogurt melts between $3.49 and $3.69. Toys R Us also sells this brand in my area. It looked like the prices for the puffs were maybe 50 cents higher than Gerber (but contain 40% more product).
The puffs remind me of Gerber's puffs, except that Happy Baby doesn't add sugar (they're sweetened with 100% fruit juice & have half the sugar content of Gerber). They have apple, banana and greens flavors, and they come in green packaging.
The puffs are made with organic whole grains, fruits and vegetables and are fortified with vitamins and minerals. The whole ingredient list for the banana flavor is: organic rice, organic whole oats, organic wheat, organic apple juice concentrate, organic whole grain brown rice, organic wheat starch, organic banana; vitamins and minerals: ascorbic acid, citric acid, di- and tri-calcium phosphate (calcium), mixed tocopherols (vitamin e), ferric orthophosphate (iron), vitamin d3, niacin (vitamin b3), zinc oxide, d-calcium pantothenate (vitamin b5), riboflavin (vitamin b2), thiamin mononitrate (vitamin b1), pyridoxine hcl (vitamin b6), vitamin b12, folic acid
I chose the banana mango flavor yogurt melts, but they also have Strawberry and Mixed Berry flavors. We'll try those later once my son has been introduced to all of the ingredients. Gerber also has yogurt melts, but since they weren't around when my daughter was a baby, I haven't tried them. I compared the nutrition content to Happy Baby's and it was pretty similar, except that Happy Baby was a bit higher in protein and some vitamins, as I can recall. They are also organic.
Oh. Em. Gee. These things are so good. I could eat a whole bag myself (if they weren't so darned expensive). Especially since there's only 120 calories in the whole bag! They're organic and contain live, active cultures, but no preservatives, chemical fertilizers, or genetically modified ingredients. There's also no soy, gluten or wheat, and they're sweetened with organic cane juice. They're freeze dried and melt quickly in baby's (or Mommy's) mouth.
The whole ingredient list for the banana mango flavor is: Vitamin D fortified culture pasteurized organic nonfat milk, organic banana, organic evaporated cane juice, organic mango, organic tapioca, pectin, organic locust bean gum, inulin, natural flavor, live and active cultures streptococcus thermophilus, bulgaricus, lactobacillus acidophilus, B. lactis, lactobacillus paracasei, lactobacillus rhamnosus.
I've also seen the baby food pouches at Toys R Us and the cereals at a few stores. They also make Happy Tot Pouches, Happy Bites Meals and Happy Baby frozen food cubes. I missed the boat on that one, I had that idea as I was making my daughter's food 4 1/2 years ago!
If you sign up for the newsletter, you can receive coupons for Happy Baby products when they send the newsletter about every three months.
In conclusion, I would like a truck load of Happy Baby yogurt melts to be delivered to my door. :-p
Last minute addition: After I wrote this (but before I published it) I spent a bunch more time on their site. I'm still a big, fat chicken when it comes to contacting companies, but I thought some of you (me included) might be interested in more of their products.
Happy Family is sponsoring a very generous review and giveaway (unfortunately not a truck load of yogurt melts!), so you will definitely want to stay tuned for that in a few weeks! I think I may turn the review into a play date/taste test!
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