Reviewing Serenity Kids Baby Food: Is It Worth It?

I was sitting on my kitchen floor at exactly 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, wearing yoga pants that hadn’t seen the inside of a gym since Obama was in office, panic-Googling "arsenic in sweet potatoes" while Maya, who was about seven months old at the time, enthusiastically rubbed some unidentifiable orange sludge directly into her eyebrows. I was crying. Or maybe just sweating. Probably both. Motherhood is extremely moist.

Here’s the thing no one tells you about starting your kid on solids: you'll somehow screw it up before you even open the first jar. My entire strategy up until that kitchen-floor breakdown was just grabbing whatever pouches at Target had the cutest watercolor fruit on the packaging. I figured if it was expensive and organic, it was fine, so instead of driving yourself crazy comparing labels and worrying about palate development, just buy the pear puree and move on with your life, right? Wrong.

My doctor, Dr. Miller—who has the patience of a saint and definitely judges my messy bun but is too polite to say it—casually mentioned at Maya’s six-month checkup that breastfed babies start running out of their maternal iron stores around that age. She was like, "Make sure you're introducing meat. They need the bioavailable iron and zinc."

Meat? In a pouch? For a baby without teeth?

Gross.

The meat puree thing really weirded me out at first

I went down a massive 3 AM rabbit hole about this. From what I understand—and honestly I got a C in high school biology so please filter this through my extreme sleep deprivation—breast milk is basically just fat and protein. But most commercial baby snacks are just applesauce masquerading as a meal. They pump it full of fruit so it tastes sweet, which totally explains why Leo, my older kid, refused to eat anything that wasn't primarily sugar until he was four.

Mark, my husband, took one look at the Grass Fed Beef and Kale pouch I finally ordered and went, "That sounds like a hangover smoothie." And honestly, he wasn't wrong. It smells like actual food. Not candy. Food.

But Maya devoured it.

She was sitting there on this Bamboo Baby Blanket that Kianao had sent me, which, okay, let’s be brutally honest about this blanket for a second. It's incredibly, obscenely soft. Like sleeping inside a marshmallow. Leo kept trying to steal it. But it has a white background. White! With colorful leaves! Who gives a baby a white blanket during the meat-and-sweet-potato phase? Maya dropped exactly one glob of beef puree on it, and I was instantly in the sink scrubbing it with Dawn dish soap like a crime scene investigator. It's a gorgeous blanket, but keep it far, far away from mealtime.

Anyway, the point is, she ate the whole pouch. And then she slept for four hours. Because she was actually full. Fat and protein, man. It’s like magic.

Let's talk about the heavy metal panic

You remember those congressional reports that came out a few years ago? The ones saying all the major baby brands had lead and cadmium and whatever else lurking in the sweet potatoes? Yeah, that was the exact week I started feeding Maya. Perfect timing.

I guess root vegetables just naturally absorb stuff from the soil? Which is terrifying. But one of the main reasons I started leaning into this specific brand is because they've this Clean Label Project Purity Award thing. Basically, they pay an independent lab to test their stuff for like 200 different heavy metals and plastics and toxins.

Does it make me feel better? Yes. Does it stop me from worrying entirely? No. Welcome to parenting.

Here are the random things I learned about their sourcing while nursing in the dark:

They use regenerative agriculture, which I think means the farms actually heal the soil instead of destroying it?
The meat is all grass-fed or pasture-raised (Global Animal Partnership certified, whatever that means, but it sounds ethical).
There are zero added sweeteners. Not even hidden ones.
They use olive oil and coconut cream for healthy fats.

It sounds incredibly pretentious. I know. I'm a walking millennial cliché. But when you're feeding a tiny human who's literally building a brain from scratch, you start caring about weird stuff like "bioavailability."

The recycling situation is a massive pain in my ass

Okay, so the brand talks a big game about sustainability, right? But the pouches are plastic. They say it's because shipping glass jars has a heavier carbon footprint, which, okay, I guess that makes sense if you do the math on freight weight. But it still left me with a mountain of empty plastic pouches staring at me from the trash can, making me feel like a garbage human.

Their solution is a partnership with TerraCycle. You're supposed to collect all your empty, crusty meat pouches in a cardboard box, print out a free shipping label, and mail them back to get recycled.

Let me tell you something about my life with a four-year-old and a baby. I can't remember to move my laundry to the dryer. I definitely can't remember to mail a box of sticky pouches to New Jersey.

I tried. I really did. I had a specific "TerraCycle Box" in my pantry. But after three weeks, it smelled like an old deli, and Mark almost threw it away three times. Finally, I just started scraping out every last drop and trying not to think about the turtles. It’s a great concept, but practically? For a sleep-deprived mom? It’s a lot of friction.

(If you're looking for sustainable things that don't require mailing boxes to New Jersey, check out Kianao's organic nursery collections. Much easier.)

My highly unhinged hierarchy of flavors

We tried almost all of them. Some were a hit. Some were offensive to my very soul. Here's how it shook out in our house:

Wild Caught Salmon: Smells like cat food. Maya cried when I tried to take it away. It was her absolute favorite thing on earth.
Free Range Chicken: Actually smelled like chicken soup. I tasted a tiny bit off my finger and it just tasted like... nothing? But healthy nothing.
Grass Fed Beef: Solid. Good texture. Stains everything you love.
Bison: Mark thought it was hilarious to feed his infant bison. Men are weird.

They also make grain-free puffs out of cassava root, which I guess is great for practicing the pincer grasp without spiking their blood sugar, and an A2 toddler formula which is probably fantastic but I was still nursing so we skipped it completely.

Which reminds me, if you need something to safely distract your kid while you desperately try to open one of these pouches with one hand... you need the Panda Play Gym Set.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this was my favorite thing we owned during Maya's first year. Real story: Leo, who was three at the time and fully feral, tried to ride the wooden A-frame like a horse. I screamed, Mark dropped his coffee mug, chaos everywhere. But the gym didn't snap. It just stood there. And then Maya would lie under that little crocheted panda and the wooden star for like 45 solid minutes. Do you know what 45 minutes of silence feels like when you've two kids? It feels like a luxury resort in Bora Bora. I drank my coffee. Hot. It was a miracle. The monochrome aesthetic was also just really calming for my overstimulated brain.

I honestly loved the quality so much that I recently bought the Nature Play Gym Set for my sister's new baby, mostly because I refused to let her buy one of those neon plastic light-up monstrosities that play the same off-key song for six months straight. The little botanical leaf toys on the nature one are so pretty.

The financial reality check

We need to talk about the price. Because holy crap.

At around $1.43 an ounce (depending on where you buy it and if you subscribe), it's wildly expensive. The regular fruit purees at the grocery store are like 50 cents an ounce. I did the math once on how much it would cost to exclusively feed Maya these pouches for a month, and then I immediately drank a glass of wine to forget the math.

It’s not realistic for most families to use this as their only food source. It just isn't.

What we ended up doing was using them as a nutritional supplement. I’d make regular, cheap oatmeal, and stir in half a pouch of the beef or turkey to add fat and protein. Or when we were doing Baby-Led Weaning and she was mostly just throwing regular food on the floor for the dog to eat, I’d hand her a pouch at the end of the meal just to guarantee she really swallowed some iron.

You do what you can. You buy the good stuff when you can afford it, and you don't beat yourself up when you're handing them a generic banana pouch in the back of a Target cart just to stop a tantrum.

Anyway, I survived the puree phase. You will too. Just buy a bib with sleeves. Trust me.

Before we get to the questions I usually get asked about this stuff, make sure you explore Kianao’s sustainable play gyms and blankets to keep your little one occupied while you figure out what the hell is for dinner.

Answering Your Panic-Googled Questions

Is it really safe to give a baby meat in a pouch?

Honestly I thought it was going to be an aggressive choking hazard or give her botulism or something, but the purees are completely smooth. My doctor said it's totally safe and really better than starting with sweet fruits because it gets them used to savory flavors. Just make sure the pouch is sealed and not expired, obviously.

Do I've to heat it up?

Nope! I thought you did, but you can serve it at room temperature right out of the pantry. Sometimes if it was cold in the house the fat would clump a little bit (which looked gross), so I'd just roll the pouch between my warm hands for a minute before giving it to her.

How long does an open pouch last in the fridge?

The package says 24 hours. I'm generally pretty fast and loose with expiration dates for myself, but with baby meat? Yeah, I threw it out exactly at the 24-hour mark. If she only ate half, I'd squeeze the rest into a silicone ice cube tray and freeze it to mix into warm pasta the next day.

Why does the salmon one smell so strong?

Because it's actual fish, unfortunately. There's no added applesauce to mask the smell. It smells exactly like canned salmon. It will make your kitchen smell. Your baby will smell like a tiny fisherman. But it has all those Omega-3s or whatever, so you just light a candle and power through it.

Can I use these if we're doing Baby-Led Weaning?

Yes! We did a mix of BLW and purees because I'm too anxious to do 100% solid foods right away. I'd spread the chicken puree onto little sticks of lightly toasted bread so she could feed herself. It's super thick, so it genuinely stays on the toast way better than regular watery baby food.