Only Organics: More Quinoa

This isn't a food review. This is a quick Ost because I found these in the in-laws' cupboard the other day.

I have not tried these foods. This is because I do not need to try these foods. They will taste, respectively, like banana and blueberry purée and kumara and banana purée. The banana will overpower, but there will be a slight aftertaste of berries on the first, and a hint of tannin-like kumara on the second. Yes, the quinoa may be present on concentrations of up to 2%: BUT IT IS PURÉED TO A SMOOTH PASTE. It will not be detectable.

Only Organic baby food, I have tweeted you before on this topic. Please stop. I know if you put quinoa in your baby food you are enabled to write Supergrain Quinoa! in fancy writing on the top of your packet. But here's the thing: it makes no difference whatsoever. The amount of quinoa in one of these sachets is probably similar to that which I would inhale passively whilst walking down Cuba Street at 10am on a Sunday morning.

I've done a little research into the health benefits of quinoa, and actually found it a little mor fifficult than I expected, by which I mean the first four google hits were pretty useless and then I got bored. One site, authoritynutrition.com sounded as though it would be fairly authoritive on nutritional matters. But then the first of their 11 proven health benefits of quinoa (number one is my favourite) boiled down to the following:

Which essentially in my opinion is the title  reworded. Granted, the article goes on to list the nutritional breakdown of quinoa, spell fibre incorrectly, and point out its benefits to weight loss, heart disease, type two diabetes and gluten intolerance, but none of these are particularly of concern to a four to six month old. Sure, quinoa, may be a great source of protein, but if your serving size is 1.4% of 120g, you're still getting  sweet FA protein. Then we come to this gem at number six:

Now, I'm not going to try and deny that quinoa has a low glycaemic index. But you know what has a very low glycaemic index? Kumara. That shit you've drowned your healthy, slow-sugar-releasing, all glorious super grain in. Damn. Anyway, on to proven reason number 8 that quinoa is good for you:

MAY have some major benefits for metabolic health. That doesn't sound so proven to me. Surely they can't pad out these reasons any more?

Fries are also easy to incorporate into your diet. I guess that's a proven health benefit of fries, then.

Oh, and on a side note, authority nutrition dot com, time to get better at clickbait: if you're going to have a list of eleven things, telling people that number one is your favourite then having it as such a let down means they're not going to read any further. Here's an example to help you out with the format!

So, after this brief foray into the world of health food blogs other than my own, I'm forced to conclude that Only Organic's slow morph into Only Quinoa can only be a cynical attempt to cash in on a current health fad. In which case, I fear they are already too late. According to the BBC Good Food blog, the UN declared the International Year of Quinoa to be 2013.

Heinz Organic Summer fruits and yoghurt with oats and quinoa

Remember that time I reviewed that Only Organic food with quinoa in it, and it got over two times as many page views than anything else I've written? Surely it was a one off and no other company would be stupid enough to put the almighty supergrain in a baby food?

WT actual F Heinz? You used to be a sensible company, dealing in ketchup and brown sauces, possibly a few baked beans or cans of spaghetti. Your baby foods have been mostly sensible combinations, albeit with the odd guava thrown in for no obvious reason. So why quinoa? Emily is, admittedly, two months older than last time she tried this fad, so I concede maybe it is slightly more likely she will finish her breakfast, stand up, and with perfect enunciation say to me 'Thankyou for breakfast Father. Especially, I am grateful for your foresight in giving me copious amounts of quinoa, which has given me the energy I need for my morning crossfit session. I'm off to the gym to flip some large tricycle tyres now. Ciao.'

Really. Quinoa in baby food. Next thing they'll have toddler sized Lululemon yoga pants.

Contains: Fruit (banana (31%), mango (16%), apples (5%)), Apple juice, Cooked oats (contains traces of wheat) (7%), Water, Greek style yoghurt (Cultured milk) (6%), Cornflour, Quinoa (1.7%), Cream, Vitamin C.

Two things stand out to me here. First, the very small elephant in the room is the quinoa, and to be fair, there's a whole 0.1% more in this food than in the Only Organic's quinoa based food, so I suppose there is hope of extra grainy flavour. Possibly with the promise of soft lumps within, there could even be some texture... Can you make quinoa into a soft lump?

Secondly, summer fruits: there are only three fruits listed in the ingredients for this food. You want summer fruits? You need peaches, strawberries, nectarines. Apple is predominantly harvested in the autumn months. Bananas, not grown in New Zealand, but are available plentifully year round at a reasonable price. Frankly, in my opinion really only mango can be classified as a truly summer fruit.

Emily's reaction: Generally, was quite favourable initially. However, soon food fatigue set in after half a jar. Emily is entering the stage where she wants to feed herself, and she wasn't about to be left wielding a spoon full of imitation cold sick.

First impressions: Have I used a cold sick analogy yet? In the last sentence, and several times previously in this blog? I'm using it again. It's yellow, and full of little lumps. It looks like cold sick. But to be fair, it's cold sick that smells predominantly like banana, like someone ate a banana, and then thought better of it.

Taste test: Actually against all odds, this goes down a treat. The taste is strongly of banana, with a hint of mango, but very little of the least summery of the fruity trio, the apply. Relatively thick on the tongue, little soft nuggets of rolled oats add an interest as it slides back. And YES! Sure enough, about once every spoonful, your tongue will find a single grain of quinoa! Sure, it's not actually enough to add any flavour, but it's there. That said, a similar texture could be achieved in this food by adding half a teaspoon of poppy seeds, or sand.

Overall: 7/10, not a bad taste or texture. Still can't get over the pointlessness of the quinoa though.

Enjoy: Down at the Hokowhitu Mums' organic paleo vegan coffee group, or wherever such people meet.

Only Organic Carrot, red lentils, and cheddar

There are times I sit down to enjoy a new baby food with my darling daughter, and we are confronted by a uniquely flavoursome punch to the palate, something we've never experienced before, but something we wouldn't mind much having to try again. And you know what? Because the world of baby purée is finite, we can try it again! But there's only so much deliciousness you can re -eat over and over again. So today it was on to new pastures, pastures containing carrots, red lentils, and cheddar. I very much had my suspicions that the lentils may turn out to be one of those foods added to the label to appeal to hipsters. Would I be proven correct? And would Emily make a face like this? (Spoiler alert: yes, that's why I have a photo of her making a face like this).

Ingredients: Vegetables (carrot (27%), pumpkin), Water, Apple, Cheese (milk) (5%), Lentil (4%), Ground rice.

And, it's all starting to fall down already. There's already looking as though there's more of the ubiquitous fillers pumpkin and apple in this than anything else, with a good dollop of water to boot. It's a little bit of a shock there's no kumara. And what was that I said about lentils being a trendy trace ingredient?

Emily's reaction: is pretty much summed up by the photo above. Mum had thought it a nice idea to try her on a piece of raw mushroom, a fungal delight her older brother inexplicably loves. Emily showed herself to be eminently more sensible, and had gagged and choked until the experiment was abandoned. 'Surely,' I thought, 'some pre-prepared packet food would go down a treat in this particular circumstance'. 'However,' I continued in internal monologue, 'past experience with cheese based foods would suggest the lentil and cheddar variety may not be the most welcome taste sensation.' Turns out the latter recollection was correct.

First impressions: I'm pretty sure I've previously hypothesised that if you were to add pumpkin to a food, it's going to dominate the taste and texture. If I haven't, I'll hypothesise that now, albeit in retrospect. On the spoon, this was orange. Granted, that could have been the carrots, but the sinewy, granular texture was all too familiar from previous pumpkiney tastings. The smell was, similarly, all pumpkin. Not even a hint of apple to linger over the turbinates.

Taste testing: I'm going to call it. What Only Organic have done here, is take Wattie's for Babies pumpkin and sweetcorn food, add some ground rice for texture, and put it in a packet suggesting far grander ingredients. I cannot taste cheddar. I cannot taste lentils. I will give benefit of the doubt, there may be some carrot included. But you are paying an extra seventy cents here for a bit of organic ground rice and a status symbol for a packet. Nothing more.

Overall: 4/10. Not bad, but tastes nothing like what it says it is on the packet.

Enjoy: trying to convince your friends at Thorndon Paleo Vegan Coffee Group and Crochet Club that your 9 month old is eating a pulse, when in fact they're actually eating a mass produced sludge aimed at a child half their age.

Heinz Organic Pumpkin, ricotta and spinach

As Emily grows, the more her diet repeats itself, and the more proper food she eats. However, today for dinner she found another baby food straight out of the upper middle class book of buzz foods. Ricotta, really Heinz? I can barely spell ricotta, let alone recognise it's taste. Surely the generic title 'pumpkin and cheese' would do? Anyway! excitement spread over my face. I realised this would be an opportunity to add to my already booming collection of foods containing pointless ingredients which should never be allowed near a small child's mouth, but at such trace levels that they barely do anyway.

Ingredients: Vegetables (71%) (pumpkin (33%), tomatoes, sweet potato, onion, zucchini, sweet corn, spinach (0.5%)), water, wheat pasta (10%), cornflour, cheese (ricotta (1.4%), pecorino (contains milk))


I feel like this is false advertising. I buy something on the pretence it is a pumpkin and spinach food, with a little bit of cheese: look at everything else in it! Half a percent spinach... It's not even trying to make an impression on the flavour, as opposed to the FIVE other vegetables listed as being present in higher quantities. And WTF... Pasta? That's a whole new carbohydratey food group just being dropped in, sorry if your baby who is pretentious enough to be eating ricotta at such a tender age is paleo, guess you can just GGF. And thirdly, I had to look up what pecorino is. Turns out it's a cheese made from the milk of sheep. Sheep. This is a food made for under one year olds. They're usually happy enough to eat a raisin covered in fluff they've found under the sofa. Why the need for sheep's milk? Chuck in some grated mild cheddar, they're happy.

Emily's reaction: I wasn't present when she ate this one. I'm told she liked it, but then, the was also half a jar left. Don't know who to believe any more.

First reactions: Is there any label on a jar, can, or packet of food better worded to get a hunger up than 'soft lumps'? To be fair, 'soft lumps' was actually a fairly good description of what this looked like, a deep orange gloop with indiscriminate chunks of maybe vegetable, maybe pasta, maybe who knows what else interspersed throughout.

Bouquet: The pumpkin runs strong on the nose of this one. There are hints of tomato which linger, but the pumpkin is so overwhelming it is easy to see exactly why it deserves top billing. A slightly wheaty tone does hint at the pasta within, but would be easily missed if you knew not it were an ingredient.

Taste test: I've tasted a fair few baby foods now. Truely, this was the first one I had really hesitated before putting in my mouth. The soft lumps, to be fair, we're probably pretty much what you'd expect: little morsels of pasta (I assume), easily mushed under tongue, and not really adding to the overall flavour. A few small solid bits of onion or zucchini also were obvious on sight, and perhaps hinted at taste-wise if played over the tongue. The main substrate of the food was half pumpkin, half tomato, and certainly not unpleasant. Maybe some slight cheesy undertones were detectable, but the overall impression was of a slightly thickened minestrone soup served at room temperature. Was the ricotta and sheepy milk curd really noticeable? No, but I doubt sales would be anywhere near as strong in the upwardly mobile middle class target demographic if you called this cheap vegetables and cheese.

Oh, and I'd completely forgotten there was meant to be any spinach in it at all, to be honest.

Overall: 7/10. Honestly, it doesn't taste that bad. But cut the crap about the ingredients, and don't advertise the soft lumps.

Enjoy: Heat it up in a bowl and add some crusty bread as a starter before an Italian meal.

Heinz Organic apple, guava and berry porridge

I know, I'd promised no more fruit flavours, but dinner was underway by the time I was home from work today, and frankly I had kinda been looking forward to this one. Heinz Organic is advertised on Wattie's website as being like their premium organic range, but TRICKY... Closer inspection of the jar reveals that, actually, this product is made in Australia from local and important ingredients... So, save the planet by eating organic, but destroy it again with baby FOODMILES! Scandalous!

It's actually been a couple of days since I last ate a puréed food, my last attempt being the frankly disastrous Wattie's green peas and courgette, so I was eager to get back in. This is the first of several foods in the pantry containing cereals or grains. My only grain experience so far being the totally anonymous quinoa offering last week, I was keen to see if a less wanky, preposterous cereal would make more of an impact. Oats have been described previously as having mysterious cholesterol lowering properties, so surely they're pretty super too?

Contains: Fruit (Apples (77%), Pink Guava (6%), Blueberries (2.4%), Blackberries (2.4%), Raspberries (2.4%)), Cooked oats (8%), Oatmeal

I'm going to call it before eating, the guava is not in this for flavour, but similar to the quinoa, is present as a wanky middle-class enticing status ingredient. I'm not sure I've ever seen a guava in my local supermarket, much less eaten one, but I reckon you could get a similar flavour out of this with an extra 6 percent apple. 

Similarly to Only Organic, Heinz Organic put an asterisk next to each of their ingredients sourced organically. In a point of difference, however, every ingredient in this Heinz Organic product has an asterisk next to it, somewhat ironic given the Only Organic name. More ironic than rain on your wedding day.

First impression: This is not a purée, it is labelled as a mash. I think that means it is allowed to have lumps in it. This food is a deep pink in colour. Now, as I said, I'm not a guava expert, and judging by the picture on the jar, this pink MAY JUST be the colour of guava, but I'm sure a similar colour could also have been made using a combination of the apples and raspberries within. Still, a fun looking colour to ingest, and the small lumpy oaty nuggets promised an exciting in-mouth experience was forthcoming.

Emily's reaction: As I write this, Emily is doing her best to loudly wake the fish that lies motionless at the bottom of our fish tank. It is surprising, therefor to know that not half an hour ago, she was lunging hingrily at the spoon from which I was attempting to taste this food. This was by some distance the biggest jar of food we had attempted to feed Emily, by the time I got home from work it was mostly empty. I'm unsure whether the guava was apparent to Emily, however.

Bouquet: Three elements predominate on the nose. First off, not surprising considering the 77 percent content, apple tones delicately dance their way through the turbinates and towards the olfactory nerve head. These are followed by generous hints of both banana and raspberry, pleasant and sweet, and enticing. I don't know what a guava smells like, I assume it's not present though.

Taste test: I had expected the soggy, soft, mushed oat sensation to be unpleasant before tasting, but I was in for a surprise. The nuggets clusters complemented the finally granular texture of the overall food substrate devinely, and proved not offensive at all. It came as something of a shock, considering the heaviness of the bouquet and the content in the ingredients list, that apple was not the predominant taste in this food. Indeed, berry tones took charge upon the buds: black, blue and rasp, with delicate currant flavours pirouetting around the back of the palate. The overall sensation in the mouth was indulgent. Perhaps a slight improvement would be made by adding some morsels of stewed apple or a similar fruit, but it would be too easy to be over critical of this food.

The guava, however, seemed once again absent from the experience. I am beginning to suspect that my belief it is to fruit what quinoa is to grains is confirmed. However, in that case, oats must be to cereals, as the humble apple is to fruit based baby foods. Somewhat ironic. Like finding a thousand knives when all you need is a spoon to eat this delicious offering.

Overall: 8/10. Being a predominantly fruit based mash, this was always going to score highly. Perhaps could have scored higher still had it ditched the guava in favour of more berries.

Enjoy: Spread on buttered fruit toast, with a cup of strong English breakfast tea.