Baby Food So Good You’ll Want It for Yourself

Subscription boxes are everywhere, for everything. Makeup, vegan meals, healthy snacks, kids’ clothes, rosé wine—if you can name it, you can find a service that will deliver your choice of curated goods to your door every month. In such an oversaturated market, it takes a lot for a new subscription to stand out. But with a few celebrity endorsements and a holistic approach, chef and nutritionist Marissa Lippert hopes to corner an overlooked market: baby food.

Olivia Wilde and Alexi Ashe Meyers (wife of Seth Meyers) and their children are already going nuts for Nourish Baby, Lippert’s new baby food subscription service. “Market offerings are primarily pureed foods in jars and a whole slew of squeeze pouches and packaged items,” says Lippert. “We investigated dozens of items and tasted quite a few and many of the items were lifeless and extremely bland. Pureed items lacked a variety in texture—texture actually aids development as babies grow.”

Lippert wanted to avoid those sugary, fruit-heavy mixes which can build a sugar-craving palette from the get-go in infants. “We questioned the actual nutrient-density and developmental benefit of pureed items,” Lippert explains. “With pouches, we feel it’s really important for a child (or an adult) to see what they’re eating so they can connect to food.”

Available in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Nourish starts with a weeklong trial, and then moves to a month subscription (from $475) with weekly pick-ups, like a CSA, which provide enough food for five days of the week (bonus: many of items are perfect for freezing so you can save some for later). The packaging is eco-friendly, the ingredients are organic and non-GMO, and the company is providing select scholarship subscriptions to underserved families via the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Baby College.

And discerning mothers are raving about the service. “My son Ashe loved the food so much,” says mother Alexi Ashe Meyers. “He finished 95 to 100 percent of every meal.” Favorites included the chopped chicken salad, the pork and eggplant, the falafel, the kebabs, and the meatballs.

“The borscht was out of this world,” Meyers adds. “All breakfasts were so great and a really delightful change from the oatmeal I feed him every other day. I will definitely use the service again and again. It made meals exciting and incredibly easy not just because I didn’t have to prep them but because he loved eating them.”

We chatted with Lippert about this new service.

What void did you see in the market?

We found that most infant food brands overlook the very ingredients that are most important for new eaters—healthy sources of fat, protein, cholesterol, and iron like egg yolks and bone broth and liver—crazy as it may sound.

We really wanted to give baby food a fresh perspective and build a healthy foundation for babes from the very start weaving together core nutrients that aid development, interesting flavors and textures that encourage adventurous tastebuds. And we wanted to provide moms some health-supportive nurturing, because they often put themselves last.

How can parents elevate their at-home ingredients and make better baby food?

A few interesting spices and ingredients go a long way—cumin, coriander, curry, toasted nori, and tahini to name a few. And it’s ok to use the tiniest bit of salt when preparing baby food to simply bring out flavor. Just remember if your child hasn’t eaten something before to be extra watchful for an allergy that first time they dive in.

Seasonal Fruit Compote

• 2 cups any seasonal fruit, cleaned and roughly chopped or left whole if berries *choose fruit that nice and ripe and really delicious so it’s naturally sweet
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

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