My Brutally Honest Review of Little Spoon Baby Food Deliveries

I'm standing in an unfamiliar kitchen in Chicago at six in the morning, holding a plastic tub of green sludge that claims to contain spirulina, chia, and something called a 'dragon fruit.' My twin daughters, Florence and Matilda, are rhythmically slamming their tiny fists against their highchair trays like a pair of demanding, sticky prisoners demanding their breakfast. We're visiting my wife's sister in the States for a month, and this trip has violently introduced me to the culturally dominant American force that's Little Spoon.

Before we had kids, I was categorically certain about how feeding them would go. I harboured a deeply arrogant belief that my offspring would consume only hand-mashed, organic heritage vegetables sourced from a local farmers' market on a Sunday morning. I pictured myself humming to BBC Radio 4 while gently steaming parsnips, creating perfectly portioned little glass jars of nutritional excellence. I thought parenting was just a matter of good scheduling and perhaps a decent food processor.

The reality of producing homemade baby food for two infants is less domestic bliss and more industrial food production facility, just with higher stress levels and zero safety compliance. For the first month of weaning, our London flat was swallowed whole by Tupperware. I spent hours boiling sweet potatoes until they collapsed into an orange paste that permanently dyed my favorite shirt, the kitchen grout, and somehow, the dog. You stand over a steaming pot of broccoli until it smells like a Victorian workhouse, desperately pureeing it into a texture that won't cause immediate choking, only to serve it to a child who looks you dead in the eye and dramatically spits it onto a white rug.

It breaks you, the utter betrayal of spending forty minutes creating an organic pear and spinach reduction just to watch them actively refuse it, only to turn around and find them happily licking the dust off the bottom of a welly boot. I eventually accepted that the effort-to-intake ratio of homemade purees was slowly destroying my sanity.

You can always just buy those shelf-stable supermarket jars that pop when you open them, but they smell faintly of cat food and parental defeat.

So, when we landed in America and my sister-in-law pointed to a fridge full of neatly stacked, aesthetically pleasing blue tubs that had been magically delivered to her doorstep on dry ice, I felt a complex mixture of British skepticism and big, exhausting jealousy.

The great organic vegetable delusion

Let's talk about what Little Spoon actually is, because the internet ads make it look like a lifestyle choice rather than a caloric necessity. It's essentially a subscription service that posts fresh, cold-pressed meals directly to your house. They start with 'Babyblends' which is just marketing speak for puree, and eventually graduate into 'Biteables' for when your kid suddenly decides they want to chew things.

My understanding of the science behind it's murky at best, but the main selling point seems to be that they use high-pressure processing instead of heat pasteurization. I'm fairly certain this just means they squish the bacteria to death rather than boiling it, which apparently keeps the vitamins intact and prevents the food from tasting like a damp cardboard box.

Our NHS health visitor back home—a wonderful woman armed with a clipboard who specializes in making you feel slightly inadequate—mentioned that we shouldn't stress about exact vitamin counts and just feed them what we eat. But we mostly eat leftover toast standing over the sink at midnight, which didn't seem entirely appropriate for a six-month-old's developing digestive tract. When I asked a private doctor we had to see in the States for Matilda's ear infection about baby food brands, she casually mentioned avoiding heavy metals like arsenic in rice puffs, which instantly sent me into a localized panic.

Apparently, a lot of standard baby food has terrifying trace elements in it, though how many rice cakes a toddler would have to consume to turn into a Victorian murder victim remains entirely unclear to me. Little Spoon leans heavily into testing for all these toxins, boasting Clean Label Project verification. It's a brilliant marketing strategy because it plays directly into the low-level hum of anxiety that soundtracks every parent's waking moments.

The mechanics of spoon-feeding two hostile dictators

The actual act of getting the Little Spoon baby food from the blue tub into the babies was an entirely different logistical nightmare. You would think feeding them would be peaceful, but it's essentially a hostage negotiation where the hostages are armed with spoons.

We actually packed our own utensils for the trip because I refuse to be at the mercy of whatever cheap plastic things are lurking in holiday rental drawers. I genuinely love the Kianao Bamboo Baby Spoon and Fork Set, mostly because the silicone tip is incredibly soft. When Florence inevitably finishes her sweet potato and kale blend and decides to use her spoon as a percussive weapon against her sister's skull, nobody ends up in A&E. The bamboo handle has a decent weight to it, which makes me feel like I'm holding a proper tool rather than a toy while trying to scrape cemented porridge off a highchair tray. Plus, it looks nice enough that I can pretend my life is still somewhat stylish.

We also keep the Silicone Baby Spoon and Fork Set in the rotation as our backup. It's perfectly fine and survives the aggressive heat of a dishwasher cycle without complaining, but it lacks that satisfying heft of the bamboo one, and the entire thing being squishy means the twins sometimes just bend it backwards instead of putting it in their mouths.

When you're attempting to feed twins, you learn very quickly that you end up with more puree on baby than actually inside baby. I spent half the trip wiping green sludge out of the girls' eyebrows. But thing is about the Little Spoon blends: they genuinely taste like the things they claim to be. I know this because I aggressively taste-tested a butternut squash and apple tub after Florence threw it at my chest. It tasted like actual squash, not the metallic, overly sweet sludge I remember from my own younger cousins' weaning days.

Explore our feeding accessories if you also want to arm yourself properly for the daily food fights.

Moving from mush to actual chewable things

Eventually, babies stop wanting purees. The medical advice I've cobbled together from late-night internet scrolling and our doctor's offhand comments suggests you're supposed to introduce lumpy textures by about eight or nine months. If you leave them on smooth mush for too long, they apparently become suspicious of anything with structure and refuse to eat anything but yogurt until they leave for university.

This is where things get genuinely terrifying, because you've to hand them solid pieces of food and just trust that they'll chew rather than inhale it. Little Spoon has these transitional meals called Biteables, which are essentially tiny, soft-cooked vegetables and pastas cut into microscopic pieces so you don't have to stand there with a paring knife turning a single carrot into fifty identical cubes while your children scream.

Of course, the transition to solid food directly coincides with teething, a cruel biological joke that ensures your child is in maximum pain right when you want them to practice biting. When they're cutting teeth and refusing absolutely everything except strawberry Calpol, the Squirrel Teether comes in incredibly handy. Matilda chews on the little acorn bit with the ferocity of a wild animal, and because it's just one solid piece of silicone, I can chuck it in the sink without worrying about mold growing in some hidden crevice.

The financial reality of outsourced sanity

If you're looking for a pristine, organized conclusion about whether this brand of baby food is objectively worth the subscription fee, I don't have one. It's undeniably a luxury service masquerading as a modern necessity.

Paying three or four dollars for a few ounces of mashed fruit and vegetables is absurd when you look at it purely mathematically. You could buy a bag of organic apples and a sweet potato for the cost of one tub. But you aren't paying for the ingredients; you're paying for the time you get back, the mental load you shed, and the immense relief of knowing you aren't accidentally poisoning your child with whatever heavy metals are allegedly lurking in the cheap supermarket alternatives.

For parents who can absorb the cost, it completely removes one of the most tedious, repetitive stressors of early parenthood. I'd love to say I eventually went back to hand-steaming local produce when we returned to London, but the truth is I immediately started desperately searching for a UK equivalent the moment our plane touched down at Heathrow.

You either pay with your money or you pay with your sanity, and after spending an hour scrubbing orange puree out of a dog's fur, you realize your sanity is probably worth protecting.

Browse our Kianao feeding essentials before you attempt your next mealtime negotiation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an expensive baby food subscription seriously worth the money?
If you genuinely enjoy batch cooking on a Sunday and don't mind your kitchen smelling constantly of boiled carrots, absolutely not. But if you're staring at a blender at 9 PM and fighting back tears because you forgot to make tomorrow's lunch, the financial hit suddenly feels like a very reasonable tax to pay for your mental health. It entirely depends on your budget and your breaking point.

What if my baby completely rejects the food?
They probably will, at least once. Florence threw an entire tub of premium kale puree at my head because it wasn't the exact temperature she preferred that day. You just wipe it off your shirt, sigh deeply, and try again the next day, accepting that babies are chaotic dictators who change their culinary preferences based on the phases of the moon.

Do I really need to worry about heavy metals in baby food?
I'm not a scientist, and reading about arsenic in rice will absolutely ruin your afternoon, but my doctor suggested it's less about complete panic and more about sensible rotation. Don't feed them rice puffs for every single meal. Mix up the grains. Brands that test for this stuff just offer a layer of psychological comfort, which is sometimes worth paying for.

When should we switch from purees to finger foods?
Around eight or nine months, according to the professionals who seem to know what they're talking about. If you wait too long, they get terribly suspicious of textures. Just chop things up small, take a deep breath, and try not to visibly panic every time they make a weird gagging noise while learning how their tongue works.

How do I get sweet potato stains out of my clothes?
You don't. You simply accept that orange is your new signature color and eventually buy darker shirts. I've tried every stain remover on the market, and sweet potato puree remains completely impervious to chemical intervention.