Strawberries and Bananas

For my first review, I did a little bit of market research.  Knowing that freeze dried Strawberries and Bananas were pretty much the only product that are marketed towards toddlers as finger foods, I wanted to do a comparison.  I bet you can guess which ones are from Mother Earth Products and which are Gerber.  The ones on the left that look like the sliced fruit is the Mother Earth Products and the little pieces on the right are the Gerber.

I bought the Gerber product a few days ago.  Marsi loves the taste of them but finds it hard to pick  up the tiny pieces.  They break up SO small that it is even hard for me to pick them up and Marsi has always liked to munch on larger pieces so we end up putting 2-3 pieces of Gerber product in her mouth at a time and she would get really frustrated that she couldn't feed herself with the small pieces.  Just to add, she does excelent with self feeding puffs which are pretty small, so it isn't that she doesn't have the skills.

With the larger pieces with the Mother Earth Products, Marsi was easily able to pick them up.  I did find that it was better if I broke the pieces in half.  But, better to have to break them up than have too small of pieces!!!  She always liked the taste of the freeze dried fruits, so she loved to be able to sit and self feed her snack.

Of course, I also eat the things that Marsi eats.  As far as taste goes, the bananas are very similar in taste between the 2 brands.  They taste excellent!  Freeze dried foods truly keep their shape, texture, and taste.

With the strawberries, there is a distinct difference!  Mother Earth Products strawberries are by far better.  I don't know if it is the size of the product or if the strawberries themselves are of better quality.  I think it is the quality that is different.  If you can see from the picture, the chunks of Gerber strawberries are very light in color as if they were freeze dried before they were ripe.  The Mother Earth Products strawberries are all very rich in color and flavor.

All in all, I am very, very impressed with these 2 products and am excited to try many other products!