Surviving the Baby Spice Era: Turmeric Stains and 90s Pop

There's a very specific, aggressive shade of yellow that a pulverized carrot takes on when you enthusiastically fold half a teaspoon of turmeric into it, and I can tell you exactly what it looks like because it's currently permanently bonded to the grout of my kitchen splashback.

I was standing there, covered in what looked like radioactive mustard, holding a tiny, rubbery spoon while Twin A screamed with the sheer, unbridled fury of a dictator who had just been served a substandard peasant dish, and Twin B calmly tried to insert a rogue floret of broccoli directly into her own ear canal.

This was all because of a massive misunderstanding in our household about the phrase "baby spice."

The vaguely terrifying concept of the flavour window

At our six-month checkup, our GP mumbled something while peering over his glasses about making sure we introduce mild spices early, suggesting there's this magical, fleeting window of time where you can wire an infant's brain to accept complex flavours before they inevitably lock down at age two and refuse to eat anything that isn't beige and shaped like a dinosaur.

I took this as a personal challenge, assuming my daughters would become tiny gourmands, and immediately began raiding the pantry to elevate their evening mush.

The books all say you should start gently with things like cinnamon or a tiny pinch of cumin to develop their palates (page 47 of a particularly smug weaning guide suggests you 'make mealtimes a serene sensory journey', which I found deeply unhelpful while fishing a lump of cumin-dusted sweet potato out of my left nostril). But I wanted to do it properly, so I went all in on turmeric and mild paprika, convinced I was saving myself from a decade of cooking separate meals.

I spent three paragraphs' worth of mental energy just stressing about the turmeric, to be honest. It stains everything it touches—skin, highchair trays, the dog, my absolute favourite white t-shirt—and once it’s there, it belongs to the ages. You find yourself scrubbing the floor with an old toothbrush at midnight, wondering if your child really needs antioxidants this badly, or if you should just surrender to the beige food destiny that awaits us all. The anxiety of trying to broaden their culinary horizons while simultaneously destroying the resale value of your house is a very specific type of modern parental torture.

Nutmeg is fine, just grate it on some pears and move on with your life.

Heavy metals and other things that ruin my sleep

But then, of course, because nothing in parenting can ever just be simple, I made the mistake of looking at the internet. I half-remember reading a terrifying article at 3am about how a bunch of imported grocery store spices are actually laced with heavy metals, particularly lead, which is apparently used to make the cheap turmeric look brighter.

My understanding of the science is murky at best, but from what I gathered through my sleep-deprived panic, pouring generic supermarket spices into a baby's developing nervous system is generally frowned upon. This led to a complete, somewhat hysterical purge of our spice rack and a frantic re-mortgaging of the house so I could buy tiny, ethically sourced jars of organic, heavy-metal-tested cinnamon from a brand that probably plays classical music to its bark.

You end up spiralling, trying to balance the urgent need to expand their palates against the fear of accidentally poisoning them, all while just trying to get a spoonful of food past their gums without it hitting the ceiling.

Check out our feeding essentials collection if you're brave enough to embark on the solid food journey.

When teething destroys your culinary ambitions

The main problem with trying to introduce complex, aromatic spices is that it usually coincides exactly with the moment they start growing actual teeth, which means they don't want to taste the cardamom-infused apple purée, they just want to violently bite the spoon until you fear for their jawline.

When the twins started cutting their front teeth, mealtimes became an absolute write-off. Twin B was drooling so much she looked like a faulty fountain, and both of them were thoroughly miserable. We tried frozen washcloths, we tried rubbing teething gel on their gums (most of which ended up on my own fingers, leaving my hand completely numb for two hours), and we heavily relied on the holy grace of NHS-approved Calpol just to get through the night.

The only thing that actually provided any peace during the day was this Panda Teether we got in a moment of desperation. I've no idea why it's a panda, but the texture seems to hit exactly the spot in their gums that makes them feel less like destroying my life. It has these little ridges that they just gnaw on like tiny, angry dogs with a bone. It’s genuinely brilliant, mostly because I can just chuck it in the dishwasher when it gets covered in dog hair and despair. I do step on it a lot in the dark, but it’s a fair trade for twenty minutes of silence.

A complete misunderstanding of the assignment

So, there I'm, scrubbing turmeric out of my own eyebrows, when my wife walks into the kitchen.

"I thought we agreed on Baby Spice?" she says, looking at the lively orange disaster zone.

I gestured helplessly at the cumin.

She sighed. "Emma Bunton, Tom. For the nursery's 90s nostalgia day. I told you I was sorting out the baby spice costume."

Ah.

While I had been having an existential crisis about lead levels in paprika, she had been tumbling down a pop-culture rabbit hole. She had been up till midnight looking at bizarre Pinterest boards labeled baby spice cj (which I can only assume is some obscure fan community or a typo she refused to admit to) and trying to work out if baby spice official was an actual licensed childrenswear line or just a hashtag millennials use to justify dressing their offspring in platform booties.

The 90s nostalgia trend has hit millennial parents hard, meaning we're now inflicting the fashion mistakes of our own youth onto our innocent children.

Building a 90s pop star out of organic cotton

The problem with trying to find authentic baby spice outfits online is that most of them are made of deeply questionable, highly flammable synthetic polyester that feels like it would give an infant a rash just by looking at it.

My wife, who's far more practical than me, decided we were going to DIY the aesthetic using clothes the twins could actually wear again without looking like they were permanently en route to a fancy dress party. The key to the Emma Bunton look, apparently, is just an aggressive amount of pastel pink, some pigtails, and a look of faux innocence.

We ended up using Kianao's Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Bodysuit in the blush pink colour. I really really love this piece. It’s soft enough that Twin A doesn't immediately try to tear it off her own body, and the little flutter sleeves give it that exact slightly-ridiculous-but-cute 90s pop star vibe my wife was aiming for. Plus, it’s organic cotton, which makes me feel slightly less guilty about the time I accidentally let them watch an hour of cartoons so I could drink a cup of coffee in silence. (Real story: we put Twin A in this for the nursery party, and within four seconds of arriving, she wiped a massive handful of chocolate cake directly down the front of it. Thankfully, it survived a 40-degree wash, which is the only metric I genuinely care about in baby clothes.)

To complete the 90s aesthetic in the nursery, I had also bought this Wooden Baby Gym, vaguely thinking the pastel rainbow aesthetic fit the vibe and would keep them distracted while I puréed more things. It’s just okay, to be brutally honest. It looks beautiful and very Scandi-chic in the corner of the room, but they mostly just stared at the wooden elephant for exactly four minutes before demanding to be held again. It makes a lovely decorative piece, though.

Whether you're trying to carefully expose your child to the culinary wonders of the spice route, or just trying to get them into a pink dress so you can take a photo for Instagram and pretend you still have a social life, the reality of parenting is mostly just managing the mess.

If you need gear that genuinely survives the chaos, go browse the Kianao baby collection before you attempt either of these things.

Things you probably want to know but were too tired to google

How do I know if my baby is reacting badly to a food spice?

In my highly unscientific experience, you'll know. If you introduce a new spice and they suddenly look like they've gone ten rounds with a swarm of bees, or their nappies become the stuff of nightmares, pull back. Our doctor basically said to watch for red rashes around the mouth or unusual fussiness, which is hilarious because my twins are unusually fussy if the wind changes direction. Just start with a tiny pinch of one thing at a time.

Is it genuinely safe to give babies cinnamon and cumin?

From everything I've aggressively researched at 2am, yes, mild spices are completely fine and really encouraged once they start solids. Just absolutely avoid anything with capsaicin—no chilli, no jalapeño, nothing that brings the heat. You just want flavour, not pain. And honestly, try to remember that while buying organic spices might save you from the lead-poisoning anxiety spiral, you still have to really get the stuff into their mouths without it decorating your ceiling.

How do I get turmeric stains out of baby clothes?

You don't. You accept that this item of clothing is now a slightly different shade of yellow and you move on with your life. I've tried baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice left in direct sunlight—it's basically dye. Just dedicate one specific, ugly bib to curry night and surrender to the stain.

What do you really need for a DIY Emma Bunton costume?

You literally just need a pastel pink dress or a flutter-sleeve bodysuit, some high white socks, and the ability to tie their wispy baby hair into two tiny pigtails without them thrashing around like a salmon. Don't buy those cheap synthetic costumes online; they sweat in them instantly. Just buy nice pink basics they can wear on a normal Tuesday.

How do I clean that silicone panda teether when it inevitably falls on the floor?

I just run it under the hot tap with some washing-up liquid if we're out and about, but at home, it goes straight onto the top rack of the dishwasher. It survives the heat perfectly. Just make sure you don't use the intensely scented dishwasher tablets, unless you want your baby to spend the afternoon tasting synthetic lemon.