do you sometimes feel the pressure is on you to prepare every single meal, make sure your child gets 5 portions of fruit and veggies a day, that chips are a cardinal sin!

well mumsjustlove have an option for you. firstly lets help dispel some myths…

freezing food looses vitamins? NO, freezing actually locks in natural goodness and those essential vitamins and minerals – remember it’s natures way of preserving! you can also make what you need and defrost when you need it which reduces food waste!

fresh is best, yes it is in terms of ingredients. if you buy a item with a long shelf life then it has extra preservatives. this is done by heating cooked food to a high temperature to kill any bugs. when heated again it will destroy vitamins and minerals and make the food overcooked.

organic is best? its the creme de la creme of farming BUT we think the humble farmer is being forgotten and in fact most home and local farms are border line organic anyway! firstly if foods are labeled as organic then they are produced according to certain production standards, meaning they are grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, must not be genetically modified and are processed without ionizing radiation or food additives. food is legally regulated and can take years for farms to be approved as an organic farm. so where do you buy your ingredients from? well here at mumsjustlove we think seeing is believing. nowadays there are farmers markets, farm shops and remember that local green grocer who will be able to tell you which farms he has sourced the product from. there are a growing number of organic and farm food delivery schemes, but really you should focus on buying local. getting your children into farm shops and seeing where those products come from help with the education of food. you tend to only find the pesticide, artificial nasties in industrial farms, those designed to supply supermarkets who need a long shelf life on their products.

so who can you trust if you want to buy a ready meal for your kids? well there will always be a time when you don’t have time to cook. Perhaps your mum or friend is caring for your child and you want to give them food for your little en. we can recommend Babylicious, all their meals are free of added preservatives, salt, sugar, colouring, antioxidants, fillers, bulking out agents or GM ingredients. Their ingredients are sourced from well trusted farms and suppliers, and the packaging is recyclable. Their ingredients are not organic which is why they are competitivly priced. It doesn’t matter too much as did you know that for under 3’s food must be manufactured to very strict standards and they apply equally to both organic and non-organic baby food and rightly so! the rules control additives and the ingredients and ensure that pesticides are within a very tight margin meaning even normal fruit and veggies are border line ‘organic’.

well Babylicious have just relaunched their baby and toddler meals. Babylicious is home made tasting frozen baby food, they have launched a new contemporary look with improved meals. The product update follows months of intensive research and directly reflects what today’s mums want when it comes to feeding their babies and toddlers.

one of the biggest changes is in the Babylicious Stage 2 meals (6 months plus) which now have an Easi-Chew texture to help babies graduate from smooth purees to proper meals, a stage many mums find difficult to make at home. “We found mums are very knowledgeable about the relationship between lumpy food, chewing and speech but some found making food with the right ‘lumpiness’ a challenge,” explains Sally Preston, founder of Babylicious. “Our improved meals help mums give their babies both the perfect consistency and great natural flavours.”

The company has also addressed the sometimes tricky issue of getting toddlers to eat vegetables. The toddler meal range – Kiddylicious – now does double duty with both hidden and visible vegetables. “Mums expressed concern over the trend to ‘hide’ vegetables from children just so that they get their five-a-day, resulting in toddlers not knowing what a vegetable looks like and creating a longer term issue. Yet mums are practical and want solutions for fussy toddlers who won’t eat veg. So we’ve given them the best of both worlds by including vegetables you can see, and some that you can’t!” says Sally.

The great news is the company has introduced a new, improved home delivery service for those mums not able to get the products in a local supermarket. The full range can be bought from the new look website and is delivered direct to customers’ homes, ready to be popped into the freezer.

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