Baby Cereal

I started my daughter on Earth's Best Organic Cereal. But after our experience with baby formula, I decided to contact them and asked where the ingredients in the cereal came from. So after I was told that they "only" outsourced one ingredient from China, I decided to stop feeding her this.

The only other option at the the time (not that long ago, 2009) I found was Happy Bellies, by Happy Baby - but it contained DHA, the only cereal in the market that did then. DHA is very common in baby formula as it thought to be beneficial for the development of vision and the brain. However, our formula does not contain DHA because hexane is used in the process to extract it from the algae and the fish that eat them.

After I contacted Happy Bellies regarding the DHA in their foods, this is the answer I got:

"Thanks for your email. I am so happy your baby likes the cereal. I understand that you may be confused because the information that you have read is not entirely true nor is it recent. I can assure you 100% that we as a small socially responsible company which I founded based on the mission to provide babies with the very best optimal organic nutrition has never ever used a hexane treated product in our foods. We pride oursleves in setting industry standards and working hard to provide parents with alternatives that they can feel good about. There would be not benefit to a business of our size to utilize a less than perfect ingredient.

Martek, which is our supplier, has an organic approved DHA, which is the most sustainable and natural source we have found that is NOT treated with hexane. That is the DHA that we use. It is absolutely not treated with hexane. They may have other processes for the non organic DHA that they sell, but we have made absolutely sure and it is stated in our supply and sourcing specifications agreements. We work with the respected pediatrician Dr Sears to make this selection baed on its sustainability and vegetarian base. Further, when the initial report came out regarding Martek, we worked with the Whole Foods Regulatory team to ensure that they DHA was absolutely free from hexane and that they were behind our decision to source from Martek. Whole Foods would not sell the product in their stores if it were as they are by far the most stringent when it come to providing clean green foods and products to their customers. "

We had a winner then! My daughter loved their cereals and after she got a bit older, I mixed baby food in them for different tastes every morning!