Dutch Apple Dessert: No More Added Sugar!

I am always looking for new things to feed my baby. When I did a big stock-up, I bought many different flavors of food because I wanted to offer my baby a wide variety of food. This is how I ended up with some of the Gerber desserts, including Dutch Apple.

After I purchased them, I realized that they included added sugar and because of this, I did not want to give them to my baby. All the baby advice that I have ever read strongly suggests that parents refrain from adding salt or sugar to the baby’s food to make it more appealing. So it is mind-boggling as to why Gerber would knowingly add sugar to their baby food. Yeah, fruit has natural sugars, but these desserts had SUGAR as one of the ingredients. Yikes!

I even expressed similar sentiments in a review of Peach Cobbler. But then, a couple of months ago, I was at the store, and I noticed that Gerber had redone some of their desserts and they were now free of added refined sugar! My faith was restored in these desserts and I happily picked up a couple of them to bring home for the baby.

In the last week, the baby has persistently given us signs that she is hungry after she eats her dinner. We have been giving her additional food- either extra veggies or sometimes a fruit. Tonight, we decided to mix things up and give her this dessert.

Gerber Dutch Apple dessert comes in a stage 2 two-pack. You get two plastic containers, and each one has 3.5 ounces of puree. The containers are sealed with a foil lid and they also come with plastic lids so that you can store an unused portion in the fridge and eat it at a later date (2-3 days later).

The puree is quite tasty for baby food! It does not taste unlike apple cobbler, but with a smoother texture. The baby ate the entire container, which I was happy to offer to her because she had eaten all of her vegetable dinner.

I would not offer a dessert puree every day. This is more about the principle of the matter- other fruit purees are just as sweet as this Dutch Apple dessert, but dessert should be more of a special occasion offering rather than an everyday occurrence. I am, however, thrilled to be able to offer “dessert” that does not contain added sugar. They seem to have sweetened it with a little bit of grape juice concentrate

Clearly, the only logical explanation is that the good folks down at Gerber read my review and then reformulated their dessert blends all within a month! Hooray!

I highly recommend Gerber Dutch Apple dessert. I love that it has been recently reformulated and the added refined sugar has been removed. This is a tasty blend that is more nutritionally sound than it used to be. Again, this is not going to be a regular meal for us, but for an every-now-and-then treat, it was a big hit with us!