Baby Food from Outside the Baby Aisle

I have a simple, and perhaps obvious, Works for Me Wednesday tip for you today, but it's one that recently occurred to me.

While feeding an individual cup of applesauce to my baby, I realized how much cheaper the regular applesauce was in comparison to baby food applesauce. And the only difference was a slightly more chunky texture, which my 9 month old has been able to handle for a while. I got 6-pack of regular applesauce cups on sale for $.99, making the cups $.33 each. That is versus a two pack of Gerber applesauce on a good sale for $.99 ($.50 per smaller cup).

I also realized that there are other items on the regular grocery shelves that are nearly identical to items sold in the baby aisle, but for a much lower price. For instance, you could buy Gerber Graduates jars of diced fruit for about $.89 each, or you could buy a 4-pack of Dole fruit cups for $2.85 or $.71 each. (This would be an even bigger savings if you got the fruit cups on sale and/or used a coupon).

I thought of several more similar substitutions; the baby item is on the left and the regular grocery aisle substitute is on the right. I'm sure there are lots of others you could come up with too!

Gerber puffs - Cheerios

Gerber pasta pickups - frozen mini ravioli

baby butternut squash - canned pumpkin

teething biscuits - biscotti

arrowroot cookies - graham crackers

baby oatmeal - regular oatmeal

We all know that you can save a ton of money on feeding your baby by making your own baby food, but it definitely does take some time and effort. The beauty of this suggestion is that you can still get the convenience of prepared and even individually packaged food, but without the extra markup for being packaged as "baby food."