Infancy irrelevance

The latest "gotta have" for the upper-class baby crew: A Beaba Babycook.

What is this, you might ask? Well basically, it's an upscale food processor. The BB's claim to fame is that it not only purees the food, but it cooks it too! It steam cooks foods for 15 minutes to preserve nutrients and flavors, then purees it so that you have baby food.

Okay. Work with me for a minute.

Now I have neither chick nor child, but even I could figure out that the whole baby food thing was a scam to get more money out of parents. Read the labels, y'all: there is nothing in a basic jar of Gerber but pureed food and some vitamin E to keep it from going bad on the store shelves. What you are paying for is the Gerber (or whomever) name, and the glass jars in which the food is packaged. Money can be saved if you just cook the food yourself and run it through a food processor (or blender) before feeding it to the baby. And this doesn't really apply to softer foods, as babies have gums (which are kinda hard, if you've ever felt them) and they can mash food up themselves for optimal digestion in their little tummies.

I don' t really get the hype. Oh wait a minute, yes I do: the Beaba Babycook is the hotness in EUROPE! Of course! Us gauche Americans HAVE to get it, so that we don't seem so bass ackward! What was I thinking?

(Give. Me. A. Break.)


Those who are so inclined already have a food processor and if you don't--and you play your cards right--you can get them rather inexpensively. Some already have a steamer contraption, if they don't know how to steam veggies right on their stovetop. Most people at least have a blender (the better to make health drinks, my dear). So the practical reasoning behind purchasing a BB eludes me, especially since we're in a recession (Beaba Babycook retails for the low, low price of $149.95. Seriously.).

But the Beaba Babycook wants you to just cook for the child separately! It's better for them, no pesky adult germs to make it ill (I can understand washing baby clothes separately, but not cooking meals!). Maybe I'm a bit biased because even as a small child, I ate what everyone else ate, and my immune system is quite strong. Even as an infant who was in the Gerber stage, I was given small amounts of adult food that was mashed up as necessary...with the back of a spoon. Seriously. There were no food processors in the house, and even though Gerber was way cheaper in the 1970s than it is now, buying jars and jars of baby food was never a practice that became the norm for the babies in our family. Neither was bending over backwards to make purees of food.

The major selling point of the Beaba Babycook is that it's a timesaver; perfect for that corporate mom who juggles her Blackberry along with baby's bottle, or for that nanny who works for corporate mom. Call me crazy, but when one usually has a child, one tends to make time for those pesky little tasks like...oh...cooking for them! Especially when you are already making dinner for the entire family; setting aside a bit for John or Jane and making sure that the meal is cut small enough not to choke them, and isn't too hard for their gums, isn't really rocket science.

Then again, I was raised differently.

Needless to say, Williams-Sonoma and the other places that sell the BB will more than likely sell out; it's trendy, like Baby Einstein DVDs. And how else can you show yourself to be the cool mom on the block with superior parenting skills, if you don't buy a BB? The reviews I've read thus far on the product rave about it (4.8 out of 5 stars), but they give me the creeps. They have a Stepford Wife quality about them, and I half expected the Whole Foods Police to stop and give out certificates of achievement. I'm all for feeding kids healthier foods, limiting environmental waste, and what have you, but folks need to do it because they care for their children--not because of some maternal one-upsmanship.

Thanks for stopping by.