Why I Finally Stopped Feeding My Kids Apple-Flavored Everything

I was standing in my kitchen at like 3 PM on a Tuesday, wearing the exact same black maternity leggings I had technically slept in, holding a plastic spoon covered in this neon orange sweet potato puree that somehow smelled exactly like a Yankee Candle. Maya was six months old at the time and screaming her tiny head off, refusing to open her mouth. My husband Dave was leaning against the counter, looking at the tiny glass jar and going, "Why is the second ingredient always apple juice? Like, even in the green bean ones?"

And he was right. The biggest lie the baby industrial complex ever sold us is that infants are basically tiny woodland creatures who naturally crave sugar and will only accept solid food if it tastes like a liquefied fruit basket. I used to think keeping the heart-shaped tags on my ty baby plushies pristine in the 90s was the most stressful thing in the world, but keeping an actual human baby fed without inadvertently turning them into a sugar-addicted carb-goblin is next level anxiety. Total nightmare.

Anyway, the point is, I was buying all these standard jars of commercial baby food because, I don't know, it's just what you do? You walk down the aisle at Target and grab the ones with the smiling babies on them. But you look closely at the labels and realize you're basically serving them dessert for dinner. Green beans and pears. Spinach and apples. It's all just sugar water masquerading as vegetables.

The massive lie about sweet potatoes and apples

My doctor, Dr. Miller—who always looks perfectly rested and wears these crisp white blouses that I'd immediately spill coffee on, which is deeply annoying—told me about this thing called the "flavor window." Apparently, between 6 and 18 months, a baby's taste buds are like little open-minded sponges. If you only give them sweet things during this time, they become conditioned to expect every meal to taste like a jolly rancher. If you introduce weird, savory, bitter things early on, they might actually eat a piece of broccoli when they're four without you having to bribe them with screen time.

She was the one who told me I should look into Serenity Kids. I had seen the brand on Instagram, obviously, because the algorithm knows I'm a tired millennial mom who's easily influenced by earth-toned packaging. But I had ignored it because their whole thing is savory profiles. Like, real savory. Wild-caught salmon. Grass-fed beef. Complex root vegetables.

Honestly, meat in a pouch sounded like dog food to me. I was terrified of it.

But Maya was in that horrible 6-month phase where she wanted to chew on literally everything, including my collarbone, the dog's tail, and the edge of the coffee table. Meal times were a battle of distraction. I'd have to swap between shoving a spoonful of puree toward her face and handing her the Squirrel Teether we got from Kianao. That teether was honestly my absolute favorite thing we owned at the time. It's this mint green silicone ring with an acorn on it, and she would just gnaw on that acorn like it owed her money while I drank my third cup of reheated coffee. I loved it because it didn't look like a glowing piece of neon plastic junk, and I could just toss it in the top rack of the dishwasher when it inevitably got coated in turkey puree. Lifesaver.

My absolute terror of meat in a pouch

So I ordered the Serenity pouches. I remember opening the free-range chicken one and taking a cautious sniff, fully expecting to gag. And yeah, I mean, it smells like pureed chicken. It's not a sensory experience I personally want to partake in at 8 AM. But Dr. Miller had explained to my slightly-panicked self that babies desperately need the iron and zinc from meats, plus the healthy fats—Serenity uses organic olive oil and coconut cream—for their brain development. My totally imperfect understanding of the science is basically that their brains are growing so fast they need dense fats, not watery fruit purees.

I gave the salmon pouch to Maya. I braced myself for the spit-up.

She sucked it down like it was a milkshake. I'm not kidding. She was obsessed. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

Of course, it wasn't always perfectly clean. Once, I squeezed a little too hard on the wild-caught salmon pouch while trying to get the last drop out, and it shot directly onto Maya's Colorful Leaves Bamboo Blanket. I almost cried. That blanket was my designated splurge—it's this organic bamboo and cotton blend with watercolor leaves on it, and it's ridiculously, incredibly soft. Like, I genuinely want an adult-sized one to wear as a cape around the house. I thought the fish smell would ruin it forever and I'd have to burn it in the backyard. But I threw it in the wash on cold and it came out smelling fine and looking completely perfect. The moisture-wicking wizardry on that fabric is entirely real. Anyway.

The heavy metal panic attack of 2021

We need to talk about the heavy metal thing. Oh god, the heavy metal reports.

When Leo (my oldest) was a baby, the news broke about arsenic and lead in commercial baby food, and I spent three solid weeks hyperventilating. I had been feeding him those little rice puffs by the handful. Just dumping them on his high chair tray so I could have four minutes of peace to load the dishwasher.

I remember Leo was lying on the floor under his Fishs Play Gym Set. Which, by the way, is a gorgeous wooden A-frame gym from Kianao. It looks super minimalist and chic in the living room, though honestly? As much as I loved how it fit my aesthetic, Leo spent half his time completely ignoring the hanging wooden rings and just staring in awe at the ceiling fan. Babies are total weirdos. It’s a nice, safe, non-toxic piece of gear, but don't underestimate the power of a ceiling fan.

Anyway, I was sitting next to him on the rug, aggressively googling "how to detox arsenic from a 7-month-old" and spiraling into a deep, dark hole of mom-guilt. Dr. Miller basically had to talk me off a ledge, explaining that heavy metals are in the soil and water, and rice just happens to be a sponge for inorganic arsenic.

This is another reason I eventually bought into the Serenity Kids hype for Maya. They're crazy about testing. They have this Clean Label Project Purity Award thing, which means they third-party test for over 200 contaminants, and they adhere to European Union standards. The EU standards are way stricter than the FDA, which I vaguely understand as Europe actually caring about consumer health while America is just three corporations in a trench coat.

Serenity makes puffs, too, but they're entirely rice-free. They use cassava root flour and pea protein instead. I threw out every plastic container of rice puffs in my pantry and never looked back. The tomato and herb flavor smells like pizza. Maya loved them, and I didn't have to worry that I was slowly poisoning her while trying to unload the silverware rack.

If you're also in the phase of trying to aggressively purge plastic and toxic crap from your house because the internet terrified you, take a breath, and maybe check out Kianao's organic baby essentials when you've a second. It helps.

Eco guilt and the great jar debate

I do have to admit one thing that bothered me for a long time. The pouches.

I hate single-use plastic. I really, really do. I carry my emotional support reusable water bottle everywhere and I use those annoying beeswax wraps that never actually stick to the bowl. So buying boxes of plastic pouches gave me a massive guilt trip. I brought this up to Dave, complaining that we should just be making our own purees in glass jars.

"Sarah, you haven't made dinner for us in three days. You're not going to steam and puree grass-fed beef on a Tuesday night," he said, handing me my coffee.

He was infuriatingly correct.

But I read up on Serenity's reasoning, and apparently, it's a carbon footprint thing. They chose pouches over glass jars because of the shipping emissions. According to the brand, one truckload of flat, lightweight pouches holds the equivalent of 26 truckloads of heavy glass jars. When you think about the fuel required to haul glass across the country, the math genuinely kind of makes sense? I think? Plus, they've a partnership with TerraCycle. You can collect your empty pouches in a box, print a free label, and mail them in to be recycled. I'd love to tell you I'm perfectly organized and do this every single month without fail, but the truth is I've a box in my garage that's currently half-full of pouches and I'll probably mail it out sometime in 2026.

So instead of letting the internet guilt-trip you about every single choice, or obsessing over whether you should be cooking three-course pureed meals from scratch, maybe just embrace the weirdness of the savory pouch and hope for the best. It's all just survival anyway.

If you're in the thick of the chewing-on-everything phase while trying to figure out solid foods, do yourself a favor and grab one of Kianao’s silicone teethers before you completely lose your mind. You can explore their safe, non-toxic baby toys right here.

My messy, totally unscientific FAQ

Are meat pouches genuinely safe sitting on a shelf?
Oh god I thought they'd spoil so fast. But they use this high-heat, high-pressure sealing thing—no preservatives. They're shelf-stable for like 18 months. Once you open them, though, you've to refrigerate them and use them within 24 hours. I usually ended up mixing the leftover beef puree into Leo's scrambled eggs the next morning so I didn't waste an $4 pouch.

Does the food seriously taste good?
I mean, not to me? But I like my coffee sweet and my wine dry. Babies have totally blank slates for taste buds. What tastes like bland, weird chicken paste to you is literally a Michelin-star flavor explosion for a baby who has only ever consumed milk.

How do I get my kid to eat it if they only want fruit?
Look, I'm not a wizard. If your kid is already addicted to the apple-spinach sugar blasts, transitioning is going to suck. Dr. Miller told me to just keep offering it without pressure. Sometimes Maya would swat the spoon away, and the next day she'd eat the whole thing. Just don't make a big stressed-out face while you feed them, because they can smell fear.

Are the Serenity puffs really better than rice puffs?
My doctor basically said yes. Cassava root doesn't absorb heavy metals the way rice does. Plus they've zero sugar. They're a little pricier, but considering I used them as a babysitter so I could shower, the ROI was definitely there for me.

Can I just make my own baby food instead?
Absolutely, if you've the time, energy, and mental bandwidth to source organic meats, steam them perfectly, blend them to the exact right consistency without making them grainy, and sanitize all the jars. If you're that mom, I bow to you. I'm the mom who once wore a shirt inside out to preschool drop-off. We rely on the pouches.