By Keri DeTore
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
If you’re a parent, Drs. Susanna Block (left) and Jonathan Scheffer want to make your life easier — they want to get your children to eat all the foods you want them to eat: veggies, fruits, grains, and spices.
With World Baby Foods, this West Seattle couple has created a line of baby food for children 6 to 18 months that draws from international recipes to produce wholesome, organic and delicious foods aimed at training your little eater to appreciate a broad range of flavors. They’re now in their third year of business, and continuing to grow.
“Dr. Susanna” is a pediatrician who has practiced in Africa and Indonesia. She noticed that most countries, and even very rural areas without access to resources weren’t transitioning their babies to solid foods the way she was taught children “should” be — with a bland, high carbohydrate diet. She observed: “Many adults would pulverize their own dinners” and feed the babies from their plates.
This was eye-opening for the doctor and led her to begin researching spices and foods and their relationships to children’s diets. She notes: “Mothers who breast-feed their babies pass along the flavors of the foods they eat, and with access to multi-cultural foods and flavors, many babies are experiencing a wide range of tastes. So, WHY weren’t there multi-cultural baby foods?”
Drs. Susanna and Jonathan partnered with local, organic farmers through the Northwest Agricultural Business Center (www.agbizcenter.org) and began making small batches of food based on global cuisines usually reserved for adult palates such as borscht, dal, and Thai food.
They also took typical single-ingredient baby foods and added protein and spice to create their own more nutritious blends such as Que Pasa Calabasa and Tokyo Tum Tum. They sold the baby food at the West Seattle Farmers Market and adjusted the recipes based on feedback they received from customers.
2-1/2 years later, their baby food is being sold through West Seattle Thriftway (the first grocer to sell the line), Whole Foods, Haggen stores, and, soon, Amazon Fresh.
Dr. Susanna is particularly concerned about the rising rate of childhood weight trouble. Providing interesting, healthful foods at a young age allows babies to “develop a taste for grains, fruits and vegetables. (They learn) what REAL food tastes like.” She adds they may also learn to appreciate cultural diversity: “We begin to understand other cultures by tasting their foods.” Within the next five years, World Baby Foods hopes to create toddler foods and add Peruvian, African, and Moroccan blends to the line.
The doctors continue to run the business themselves from their Alki-area office while still practicing medicine. Dr. Jonathan built the website — www.worldbabyfoods.com (note the contest on the home page) — and they’re about to get busier: The doctors will be adopting a baby from Ethiopia later this year. Dr. Susanna says they’ll need to add an Ethiopian recipe to their flavors.
It’s not just about the food, Dr. Susanna adds: “It’s the importance of multiculturalism. We’re in a diverse world where it’s easy to travel. It’s important to teach kids to be excited about that; to embrace diversity and to be a good world citizen.”
They sell their food online as well as at selected grocery stores, as mentioned above.
[Footnote from Keri: If you’re wondering, how delicious Baby Borscht could possibly be? — try it; I did. It was good! As was the Que Pasa Calabasa. Really — I ate several mouthfuls of each and found them to be quite tasty. I may even share them with my toddler nephew.]
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