I had never really thought about baby carrots being a convenience food until I did my grocery shopping at Target a couple of weeks ago. At Aldi, I am able to get baby carrots for $.78 a bag and it doesn’t *seem* like much more than the carrots that are not processed.
When I shopped at Target though, I noticed a considerable difference because the unprocessed carrots were on sale for $2 for 5 pounds of carrots, while the 1 pound bag of baby carrots was almost $2 per pound. Have I been buying a convenience food? And exactly what have I been paying for?
I happened upon this excellent article from Wise Bread on what exactly is up with those baby carrots. If you don’t feel like reading the entire piece, the premises of the article is that baby carrots are not a frugal choice for families. Not only are they not frugal, but you are actually paying MORE for a product that is of a LESSER quality. What? Did I read that right?
Baby carrots only have 70% of the beta carotene compared to the unprocessed variety and they actually have less flavor because they are produced in a different way than the regular old carrots we grew up on.
When I got my carrots home, I did a little taste test and I definitely could taste a major difference between the carrots I cut myself versus the carrots that were processed for me. The carrots that I cut just tasted more flavorful and fresher while the baby carrots just didn’t have much flavor at all.
To speed the cutting process up, I reused one of those plastic grocery bags and rested that on top of my cutting board so that I could scoop and dump all of the peelings in one fell swoop. I chopped the carrots up for the week while I caught up on my television shows in the kitchen. It was a quick and easy way to make some snacks for the week that would save me time during our lunches.
I just want to say that I am not discouraging anyone from eating healthy. If baby carrots are worth the convenience and are an ideal way to get some nutrition in your family’s day, then by all means, buy them. I just wanted to point out that from a frugal perspective, that I didn’t want to pay more for the convenience especially now that I know how great a fresh cut carrot really can taste and I know that my kid’s would benefit nutritionally from me cutting the carrots myself.
Sound Off: Going along with the discussion on baby carrots, are there convenience foods you buy to get your kids to eat healthy? Is there a convenience food that you are willing to splurge on to make sure they get all their nutrition in for the day? Please share!
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15 Responses to “Are Baby Carrots a Convenience Food?”
Thanks for writing about baby carrots, that is interesting! I had always thought the baby carrots were a convenience food, but I didn’t realize they were grown differently. I have had some baby carrots that I thought were delicious, but also several packs that weren’t very good. Recently I’ve gone back to “regular” carrots or the matchstick carrots if I need tiny pieces and don’t want to take the time.
The convenience food I rely on (only in the winter) is frozen bagged vegetables. I buy them when they are on sale, (right now I’m loving the steamers in the asian and spring vegetable mixes) and we drop a 12-16oz bag into whatever main dish we are making on Sunday. We cook mainly on Sunday and eat the meals throughout the week since we both work and weeknights are hectic. With the frozen vegetables, we are getting a lot of added nutrition with virtually no added time.
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One thing our household is guilty of is buying those apple slices preserved in lemon juice that come in the individual Ziploc bags. Now, in our defense we USUALLY only buy them when we are headed out to a soccer game, or a prolonged event where it isn’t easy to prepare the slices. My son is an extremely picky eater and won’t eat the peel, and won’t eat them if they have a hint of brown.
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http://www.amazon.com/s.html?ie=UTF8&node;=3760931&brand;=Larabar
If the kids start complaining about being hungry when we are running errands, I give them a Larabar. They aren’t the cheapest, but they are healthy and keeping them in the van helps my temptation to go through the drive-thru and blow our budget as well as our health.
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Well I don’t know if it qualifies as a convenience food, but my answer would be blueberries. I don’t like them myself, but am so glad my almost 4 yr old son adores them, so I buy them every week. I figure they are expensive but so worth it to get such a healthy fruit in my son!
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Now I hope, as the frugal mom you are, you are saving those carrot peelings and freezing them! My dad saves all that stuff and uses it to make soup broth. I don’t know if it adds any flavor or not, but I will say he makes the best homemade soups I’ve ever had!
I’m extremely guilty of buying the baby carrots (tho in my defense, I almost always get them on sale at Meijer!). I guess I’m just too lazy to spend the time peeling & cutting. I don’t eat them very often myself, so I never noticed a taste difference between regular & baby carrots, though I will say I can often tell a difference in flavor from one bag of baby carrots to another.
Thanks for the expose on the carrot industry!
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scandal! hehe I remember when I found out the truth about baby carrots. We stopped buying them and are making carrot sticks now.
I have been guilty of buying individual servings of applesauce, yogurt or cheese sticks for my son. At home we buy the big containers and dish out, but it is so easy to grab and run with something healthy. We made our own baby food and everything so these are the only little containers I’ve gotten for him.
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My daughters will eat fruit but they will not eat vegetables–there is no sneaking them into other foods or trying to hide their flavor, so I buy Flat Earth Baked Chips. Each serving has a 1/2 c. of vegetables (or fruit depending on which flavor you get.) My girls (18 mo. and 2 1/2) LOVE them! But they are not particularly marketed to kids and at $1.99, or more a bag they are not cheap. (depends on what store, WalMart is the cheapest that I’ve found)
I also use the V8 Fruit juices to help get them all their vegetables!
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Lately our Aldi has been having the baby carrots on sale for about .59 a bag – so we’ve bought a lot of bags.
My dh eats them every day and my dd thinks they are a treat and loves to snack on them.
I am lazy about peeling carrots. I actually taught my dd to do it.
When the baby carrots are not on sale – we usually peel a large bag of regular carrots, wash/slice and then put them in a plastic container with some water. That will last about a week.
I think the small carrots could be used to “entice” little kids to eat them – but then again you can cut the regular carrots as thinly and small as you want.
I don’t buy many convenience foods at all – other than mixed stir fry frozen veggies
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Baby carrots are my weakness. The thought of pealing, cutting and bagging up carrots makes me tired! Aside from baby carrots, we stick to unprocessed stuff like cucumbers, celery and cauliflower.
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For the picky eaters… There is a book out called Decepetively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. (Didn’t Amy talk to her?) This is the best way to get kids to eat their vegetables and they don’t even know it!!! You can hide pureed squash for example in macarroni and cheese and I am telling you the truth, the kids can’t tell the difference. There are recipes for chocolate chip cookies and brownies..all have vegetables in it. Look on http://www.half.com to find this book fr a really good price. I bought mine from this website for $10.00 plus $3.45 for shipping. My daughter is a picky eater also so I know this can be frustrating. Good Luck.. now go and be sneaky with those vegetables.
Blessings,
Jodi
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I don’t do much in the way of convenience food (I don’t consider frozen veggies to be convenience food-they are cheaper than fresh but tastier than canned-and you can’t get canned broccoli or cauliflower).
I do tend to keep either a frozen pizza or some chicken nuggets stashed in the freezer-but these only get used in “emergencies” and keep me from ordering out. I probably only use such “junk” 2 or 3 times a month, sometimes less.
My big “splurge” is different shaped sprinkles that I buy at the bulk food store. It is funny how plain cheerios or plain oatmeal looks drab, but put a few flower shaped pastel sprinkles on it, and suddenly it is much “cool”er! I think I’m still using less sugar than the sugared cereals, and still spending less than buying chocolate frosted sugar bombs. . . .
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I’m going to try this, as I’ve been very disappointed lately in the quality of Aldi’s baby carrots. The one convenience food I will buy is prewashed and cut up greens (my boys love collard and turnip greens). Dark greens are massively healthy, but notoriously gritty and a pain really get clean ( I have heard of folks running them through the washing machine!), so it’s worth it for me.
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Amy,
This is really interesting. We buy baby carrots and I guess I never really thought about it. Hmm–now I will.
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I also don’t consider frozen veggies a convenience food – they are healthier than canned (and cheaper, in the case of spinach) and cheaper than fresh very often.
I buy Mott’s Healthy Applesauce – the ones that are flavored blueberry, strawberry, etc. without the artificial colors. It kills my frugal soul to do it (they are almost $2 at WalMart, closer to $4 anywhere else) but it is the only way my son will take his supplements (I open the capsules and mix them into the applesauce). So I consder one cup per day a necessity.
I also buy Annie’s Organics Mac and Cheese. I just don’t have it in me to make mac n cheese from scratch for everybody, and I can find them for 70 cents a box at Big Lots. I dump in frozen veggies, too.
BTW – my 3 yo on up peel their own carrots for snacks and eat them like bugs bunny. They like to do it themselves!
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I so love baby carrots!!! My kids do too. I have tried to buy the sticks and cut them cute but the baby carrots are always requested. It also seems like they taste better.
I have to work on this some more!
Thanks for the terrific post.
Debbie aka The Real World Martha(S)
http://realworldmartha.wordpress.com
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